Photography Skills at Their Best

Basketball is in full swing for my 8 year. I try to make it to all the practices to show him my support. I come late but I make it. While I am there, my three year old needs to be kept occupied. I occasionally let him play with my iPhone. I know it sounds crazy but he will sit still and (sometimes) not drop it. There are plenty of great apps for preschoolers.* He can work my phone so well. He knows exactly how to use this phone and where "his" apps are on the phone. These new age technology kids will blow us away ten years from now, I 'm sure.

I use my phone to take plenty of pictures. I barely take my "real" camera anywhere anymore. Many pictures on this blog are taken with my iPhone. I love to look at pictures of my kids so from time to time I look at them on my iPhone. I found great surprises in my photo album when I looked at it last night. You see my 3 year and 8 year old love to take pictures of random objects. My three year old seems to mainly take pictures while we are at basketball practice. Take a look at his photography skills:


What is practice without an unhealthy snack!




Got to get the picture of the team....or at least their feet.




Well here is a better one...you can see the coach (my husband's butt).




I guess he couldn't leave out his floor cleaning partner (they slide on the floor, a lot)and germ sharing partner (they share snacks). I am assuming she gets dragged along to her brother's many activities, as well.




I suppose my son has an affinity for her grandma, too, just not a very good angle!





*One day I am going to do a post on great apps.

Help Haiti

This is a simple request.

When Katrina happened I was angry. I wanted so badly to go to Louisiana and just help. I wanted the schools in Arkansas to shut down and house all the evacuees. I am having those same feelings now. So, I found something I can do.

Let's do our part:

The Clinton Foundation – Text “Haiti” to 20222 to donate $10 or go to clintonfoundation.org.

The American Red Cross – Text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10, visit redcross.org or call (800) RED-CROSS.

Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti Foundation – Text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 or visit yele.org.

The Clinton Foundation – Text “Haiti” to 20222 to donate $10 or go to clintonfoundation.org.

I keep staying with the times

Look up.

Look down.

Look left.

Look right.

Yep, I have officially joined twitter.

Now follow me.

What are little boys made of?

....Frogs and Snails, and Puppy-dogs Tails


I have boys. I have wild boys. They are messy, sloppy, wasteful, and dirty. It's an on going struggle to keep up after them because they are always on the go. They go to school, practice, (sometimes) church. They visit with my mom. They go visit with my dad, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law. We go to the zoo. We go to the museum. We go, go, go.

My oldest son plays sports all year round. This means I am constantly washing jerseys, and sports bottles, as well as packing bags and keeping up with mouth pieces. Let's not even touch on keeping up with his glasses or trying to make sure they stay in one piece. I think we can easily say that he keeps my husband and I ripping and running around town, a lot.

Then there is the little one who is by far the wildest one of the two. Did I say wildest? I meant to say rowdiest. My mom nicknamed him Tasmanian Devil when he was about nine months old. He is annoyingly destructive and loud. When we are running all over town for my oldest, the little one is being dragged along. It is mostly me who is there to mangle him while my husband (the usual coach of said sport) is working with the oldest son. I become a multitasking phenom of sorts while trying to watch the game, watch him and chat with the other "said sport" moms.

At home is where the rowdy activity festers. For some reason someone decided that the light saber would be a great toy.
Mr. Toy Maker, did you even think about my son's glasses? Did you think about
my laptop? And what about my TV? Exactly what did you think kids were suppose
to do with those? Swing them around and not hit a thing? Mr. Toy Maker, how
was my mother suppose to not walk out of the store with one for each of her
grandsons who love Star Wars?
Batman, Spiderman, Super Hero Squad, and legos rule the land at my end of the cul-de-sac. There is nothing like walking in from work, taking your shoes off and walking towards the kitchen and your foot meet Batman's motorcycle with one wheel. Ouch! While recovering from the encounter you come across the kool-aid infested shoe because the little one wanted to try his hand at pouring his own drink and for some reason or other thought that drinking out of his shoe would be the best idea. Oh, do I have boys or what!

When I look back at all the mess and noise, I wonder what it would have been like to have girls instead. I, then, step back and remember myself as a kid over analyzing and over reacting to everything and decide that my boys are okay. No, they are great! Spill something......walk around it. Break something.....keep it moving. Loose a toy....pick up another. I can learn some de-stressing strategies from them.

I love them!



What's in there?



Oh....Mr. Freeze.



Batman must have trapped him.



Probably because he made this mess.



With plenty of help from Buzz Lightyear, obviously.

Parents just don't understand

This post may open up a can of worms (later) but it's been stirring up in me for the past year and last night I have may shown the wedge that I knew and recognized existed between my father and I, that he didn't acknowledge. You see, we have a rocky past. It is mostly all his doing. As a grown child I still believe he is the reason our past relationship was rocky. However, as much as my mom hated him she always preached to us "Honor thy mother and thy father and thy days will be long." So, therefore, I have always had a constant struggle with my feelings about his past choices and lifestyle as I became older and more mature. At the age of twenty-one, after the birth of my first child I began to put those angry feelings aside and that open the door for my son to have a wonderful Pawpaw and later my second son. I thought I put quite a bit of it behind me, but the past has a way of creeping up on you when you least expect it.

I began to notice little things about him during '09 that just annoyed the hell out of me, like trying to give fatherly advice or sticking his noise where it was uninvited. I wanted to yell out to dude, "Just be the grandfather. Too late for Daddy."

He recently answered his calling to preach. I believe he was called but I don't believe there is much of a change in him except for his lifestyle but not his thoughts or beliefs. I don't even think he even acknowledges his past wrong doings toward others. I accept his calling but I don't kiss his you know what for it either. It is what it is.

He called me yesterday to say he was staying with me for 3 days while he attended a church conference. I didn't want him to stay but I never interjected to say he couldn't. So, he thought he could stay. I have to add that there have been some things that he has done to my husband in the past to make him feel uncomfortable but my husband tolerates him because he loves me and he knows the relationship with my dad is weird, at best. I knew my dad staying would make my husband uncomfortable in his own home and I just don't trust my dad to be that close to me in my life to stay at my house for one day, so certainly not three. The strange thing is I will let my kids stay with him. They love him and trust him. I respect their relationship. Something about him being in my environment bothers me. I don't mind going to his because I can leave or take my kids out of it. It probably has something to do with my childhood memories of him with his relationship with my mother and possibly something to do with him picking up with another family after he and my mom finally called it quits.

Well, I thought about those 3 days and decided I am not enough of a big girl to suck it up and let him stay. I gave him a BS excuse about it not being a good week for overnight guest, I hadn't discussed it with my husband and that we really didn't have a place for him to sleep anyway. It was obvious that it was BS but I wanted to be nice about it instead of bring up old horrible memories in which he probably has buried away but I for some reason this past year fought to push away. No sense in both of us being upset. When I gave him the excuses his response was a very dry, "Oh."

The man had the nerve to sound as if he was mad. I offered to help find a hotel and he dryly declined. This made my decision feel right. Still the same guy who thinks his kids owe him something.

Here it is 5 days after the New Year when I decided to take on NO STRESS and he unintentionally brings it on me.

All day I have been saying to myself WOOSAH! WOOSAH! Work through these emotions. WOOSAH!

I told my husband that the situation didn't bother me but obviously it does. He knew I was lying.

WOOSAH!

Back to Business

Christmas came, then went. I spent it with family. We relaxed, watched some basketball and played some serious Wii. My eight year killed everybody in Super Mario Bros. vs Sonic Olympic Games. His nickname for the day, given by my mother was "Little Nerd Boy". She called him this after he dusted her in table tennis. Can we say Sore Looser!?! He took this name with pride.

New Years came, then went. We spent this day with friends and family. The night was spent playing a major Connect Four tournament. We had a bracket and a $10 pot. It was good fun. The kids and adults had a great time. I am not a drinker but I am told that Connect Four was fun because it was mixed with Margaritas.

I am still alive and kicking. I still have a job. I still have Facebook. Life is in auto-pilot.

However, I did make a few resolutions for the year. None of them are major because my number one resolution sort of cancels them out:
NO STRESS! I am like a duck this year. You all can stand by and watch the *ish roll off my back, 'cause it's not staying with me. One more time: NO STRESS.

I did make a few fun resolutions like get back to being more fashionable, be more green, and try to get back to exercising again. Other than those, I am pretty much on an easy track, except for those new, oh so, minor life goals I created back in December.

So, therefore the new years resolutions are purely minimal as opposed to what I really need to be working on. Yet, NO STRESS is my theme in 2010.

FYI...
I was off from work for the past 2 weeks and loved every minute of it. The vacation led to the NO STRESS attitude. It was eye opening.

I researched blogs while I was on break, too. Got some changes in store for this site. Be on the look out. You may return one day and feel slightly refreshed.

one last thing-
Sadly these are the few pictures I took over the break.


The culprit on the left only helped clean the icing bowl...with his face.



Please don't dog my tree. I get better every year.



I love it when he plays copy cat. He loves to pretend to be his big brother. What do you think he's really reading?



Here he is again, seriously at it!

I must take more pictures in the future. I am usually better at capturing my useless time.