Selah on the pot

Just moments after I took this picture Selah took off her hat, waved it around and said, "Yee Haw!"

This and That

Since our Christmas cards went out, I can now post our family picture! Hooray!


Audie in her favorite shirt. She wears it about 3 times a week.

Here's the quilt I blogged about a few posts ago.

 The girls had their own band one day.

 Wild Things. Surely our favorite book.

Corinne had her Christmas Piano recital. She did so good!

The recital was at a nursing home. Corinne accompanied the residents in playing while they sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas". Don't get too impressed. It was the slow version. I suppose it was exactly what the residents needed to sing along.

All she wants for Christmas...

...is her two front teeth.

Corinne finally lost her second tooth on top. I said "finally" because that thing was hanging and dangling like an old lady's chest in need of a brassiere. For WEEKS we asked her if we could help her pull it out, and she wouldn't let anyone near her mouth. She could push the tooth with her tongue out to a 90 degree angle- it was so gross. She still wouldn't let anyone touch it. So, one night while wrestling on the ground with her, I took her hand and bopped it on her mouth...and it fell right out. She started to laugh and cheer. 

Phew. Glad that trauma is over with.

Christmas Card 2013 Outtakes

The Christmas Card Family Photo.
You gotta do it.
It never goes well.
It ends up with kids crying.
Moms frustrated.
Dads impatient.

Maybe to make things more fun, we should hold a caption contest for a featured photo.
Now that's an idea.

We set the camera on it's timer for pictures this time around. It went okay....sorta.
After it started going south, we called my mom over to try to get Selah's attention while the shutter clicked. That didn't work either.
No promises on Christmas cards this year, folks.

Enjoy this year's outtakes.

 New for 2013. Crop top sweaters!

Oh. My. Word. They are twins.

How would you like the photo below to grace your mantle? I think this is the one!
"May your Christmas dreams be as lofty as Selah's hair while throwing a fit."

 Maybe we put too much emphasis on the perfect picture/Christmas Card.

 Forced smiles by this point.

....aaaaaaaand we're done.

Mini-Matt

A Day in the Life- Our 9 to 5.

We have a pretty basic routine around here. Things can get mundane at times, but, this is life.
Today, I kept my camera close and took pictures of our day.
I know I have said it a million times before, but these are the kinds of images that I love seeing and capturing, because this is real life. No poses, or Photoshop edits here!
The pics I'm in, are from a timer on the camera.

Our morning starts anywhere from 7am to 7:45am, depending on how long Selah sleeps in the morning. Matt leaves for work around that time, and Selah usually wakes up when he leaves.
This is what I see first when I wake up...a picture of an orphan I pray for in Nigeria. Her name is Dashuma. I hope one day, I can meet her.

 Like I said above, Selah is the first one up. She asks for breakfast, I take her in the kitchen, make it, then go back to my bed for a few minutes of quiet time to myself before the older girls wake up around 8.

 Next one asking for breakfast is Audie. Sometimes she makes breakfast herself, sometimes not.

 After breakfast the girls get dressed while I hop in the shower. I usually find Corinne reading on the couch when I get out, and we start school  by 8:30 or 9:00 am. Tuesdays and Thursdays, the girls have Live Lessons over the computer, starting at 9 am, so those days require a tad of an earlier start than the others. 

Selah asks to do school too. This morning I gave her a piece of paper to color on. She ended up ripping it up and those ripped up pieces of paper ended up on the floor. Nothing new here.

So I can spend a little more time with Audie, uninterrupted, I write out Corinne's lesson plans a little more strategic to what works for us. Her lessons are listed on her task list on the computer, but it helps (both of us) to have a visual list that she can cross things off of.

 Audie has been in a trend of doing her school work on the top step of the stairs going to the basement.
Why not?

On any given day, there can be a number of shoes on the floor. Today, there were 4 pairs on the kitchen floor. Nothing new here, either.

 When school is done, the pick- up process starts. The shoes, the pieces of paper Selah tossed on the floor, the sippy cups....
I load the dishwasher from the breakfast and/or lunch dishes, sweep the kitchen floor...

 Selah helps

Daily, the girls play pretty well together. They play Barbie's or Playmobil, or Polly Pocket dolls.

Rounding up everyone for lunch, I called for Selah and I couldn't find her. She had taken herself to the bathroom.
Which requires taking off all of your clothes?

 I love that she finds herself independent to take herself to the bathroom...however, I need to know when she is going. Twice, there has been copious amounts of toilet paper in the pot....she clearly needs assistance in the area of wiping her bum.

This is a typical Audie set-up... Almost daily, she plays "office"- pulling together keyboards and toy-computers, and phones. She sits at the "desk", and "answers the phone", "prints out receipts", and "takes notes."

Twice or more, Selah will be a crank pot and throw a fit.

While Selah naps, the girls watch TV or a movie. I use this time for my time. I need it. I quilt, sew, prepare things for dinner that night, or things relaxing. This hour of the day can be priceless.

In the last hour or two before Matt gets home, we play outside, play Barbies, sit on the porch, or read books. This can be the longest hour of the day...:) But it is a great sound when we hear the garage door start to open, and Matt's car pull in.

I prepare dinner, and one or both of the girls set the table.

We sit down to eat- and that's our 9 to 5 :)

How do you REALLY feel?

 How I Hate School

by Corinne (spelling corrections by mom)

There are dumb things in school. I can't do anything cause school gets in the way. I'd rather be playing or sleeping or something. That's why I hate school. School is so boring.

:::::::::::::::::::::

Corinne's paper was supposed to be written about finding five coins, and how much those five coins add up to. Instead, while pouting in the corner of the couch, she opted to write about how she hates school.

Of course, I didn't let this fly, and I threatened to email it to her teacher. It took her a couple hours, but she came around and wrote the story she was supposed to write. I keep reminding Corinne she doesn't know how good she has it, finishing her homeschool work in just a few hours, then having the rest of the day to do whatever she wants. Still, she does have her (rare) days, and today was one of them.

I appreciated the comic relief that came from her writing frustrations. This is one of the papers to put away and pull out in a decade, and let her laugh at herself.

A first trip to the ER

Almost a month ago, we had our first time visiting the ER with a kid.
Selah was running full force down the hallway and hit the doorframe at the end of the hallway, which prompted a fall into our bed. Her head ended up needing 2 staples.

All is better now, the staples are removed, and she is still running full force down the hallway.

Audie says...::black and white edition::

A couple summers ago I was given a bag of my Grandpa's photographs. And, by bag, I mean a plastic grocery sack, with random pictures, most of the bent and stuck together from being wet at some point.
I have intentions of going through them, straightening them up, and putting the prints in a mini album of some sort. I have heard rumors that there are more pictures somewhere...and more slides somewhere...It would be cool to get a hold of those and get those in a book as well.

Today while I was putting some things way on a closet shelf, the bag of pics fell on my head. I thought I'd take a look through them. Looking through the pictures caused my creative endorphins to get going! This is why I love photography! And, why I have come to love black and white images-- It inspires me to get out my camera and take pictures-- but also get them printed on paper- so it actually becomes a photograph! There are so many pictures that tell a story, and put history in your hands. I will have to share some of the other photographs with you in another post, but for now, share something that Audie said.

Audie came into where I was going through the pictures and was looking through them. I was explaining to her that most of the pictures were of her Great-Grandpa Gordon while he was a missionary in Africa. Upon looking at the picture above,(I'm guessing the pic is of my aunts, Beth and Marcia) Audie said, "I bet these are Africans! Because they don't have any shoes on."

I love that she doesn't see skin color yet- (Granted, this is a black and white picture). But I don't love the quickness to a stereotype (Even though it was a funny thought)!