I Love My Life, behind the scenes of Jamie Sierra Knits: November 2007

Trapped inside? Let's play "Bahhhss!"

Actually the date Thursday December 13, 2007. My "date" thing is stuck November 26th for some reason? Moving on...

Hunter positively adores these blocks. He'll plant himself beneath the shelf where I store them, and shout "Bahhhss" with his hands in the air until someone sees him and hands him his tray of "Bahhhhss." I adore watching him play with these blocks. A couple days ago I took somewhere near two dozen photos of him building his tall towers and knocking them over only to start again. You'll get a lot of mundane life overphotographed in excess from me this winter. But hey, if you were this little stinkers grandma and you lived 300 or 2200 miles away, wouldn't you love each one of these shots? Yup. Yes you would.

More snow...

We've already had over a foot of snow, and it's not even winter yet. I can't complain though, because I love snow. I love everything about it, especially the ugly water proof shoes I have to wear to get out our front door. I even like shoveling when I'm not battling a killer cold like I am right now (the mountain of tissue gets higher by the minute). I love sledding, playing in the snow... which today would be perfect for if I was not laying lethargically in my special chair, drowning in snot, sipping my coffee through fever blisters and typing with goo in my eyes. Sigh.

Here are some of the biggest snow flakes I've ever seen falling out our front window:

This is the street.

The snow transitioned to ice, and back to snow all day on Monday, leaving our poor inflatable Frosty lying down most of the day.

Family Photo Shoot

Typing the word, "shoot" in the title there made me want to say "shoo-ooo-oot" like Mater in Cars. I really do watch too many kids movies.
Moving on... yesterday I decided to force my sick family to take a picture to stick in this year's Christmas Cards. I found a tripod we had for or our ancient VHS camcorder, and prayed it would work for my Kodak digital Z712 IS. TaDa! As Hunter would say, they fit perfectly. I read the manual on how to work my timer, and we were in business. The light was pretty good in the living room yesterday, natural, and Dad was home before dark, so all the stars aligned. We threw on somthing besides pajamas (the boys wore their little Osh Kosh flannels I love way too much). Dad's shirt doesn't say anything about hunting, so that's a step. I didn't have moose or sock monkey pajamas on, and wore a little make-up. Theo and I pondered taking the picture in the state we were in... him in long johns from head to two, me in wrinkled moose jammies, and the boys half dressed and coverd in crumbs. We thought it would make you all laugh... But we decided against it. This is us, about as real as we get.

Me and Theo taking the test shot. He's still in his long johns here, LOL.

I thought that cream-colored sweater I had on made my head look a little too rotund (couldn't possibly be that I am actually rotund? LOL). Numerous attempts followed:

Hey, we're all looking at the camera. No one's blurry. Done:

God forbid a mother have a pictures of her two boys with her.

Merry Christmas.

Finally, a battery charger!

For Christmas this year I put all practical things on my wish list (okay, a gold tiffany charm bracelet is not practical, but is it is a wishlist). But ultra powerful lithium rechargeable camera batteries, a charger, and a huge SD card to use in the camera is pretty darn practical if you're me. I placed an order with Circuit City online for the aforementioned battery & charger and they sent me the wrong charger. Turns out they don't carry the correct one. But Best Buy does. Right there in town all along... I went a long week and half without a camera battery charger. Torture. Needless to say, the kidlets are growing, and I think we're due for some around the house kind of pictures. Dare I interupt Ben's play to ask for a smile, right?

Hunter and I are a little sick. Well, we're all sick, but Hunter and I are in the middle part of the cold. We watched Barney 6 times Monday morning, b/c he'd lose it if I turned it off. He was too weak to really play, so sitting and relaxing with his big purple singing companion fit his bill just fine.

This is what I would get if I turned Barney off.

He did pick up a book or two, to eat, not to read, duh.

Last night we watched Jim Carrey's Grinch Who Stole Christmas as a whole family. Ben loved it, sitting dumbfounded with his mouth open the whole time, as Hunter chose to give mom a million zerberts and zone in and out of the plotline. But, my point is, I forgot how genius that movie is. I think Ron Howard is the best director ever. Watch it again. Nuf said.

Crafty Me

As many of you know, I freqeunt a scrapooking site called Two Peas in a Bucket, a site loaded with inspiration for scrapbooking and beyond. I have noticed some cool projects in last year using styrofoam cones to make Christmas Tree tabletop decor. The best ones involve buttons, paper, ribbons... I just had to try one myself. I picked up some ribbon, pins, sequins, beads, rhinestones, glitter glue and just about any other hideously sparkly thing I could find at Micheals. I even found some snow white marabou on clearance (now waiting for another project). The result of my cone tree is a little vintage looking I think, like one of those grandma-ish decorations you pull out of the attic... very me. I got the idea for the wreath base from a fellow pea, Stephanie Howell. Enjoy my take on the cone tree:

"Can we go play in the snow, puh-lease?"

These boys hounded me all day yesterday to take them out in the snow. Why not? I would if I was there age, too. So out we went. Now, I've lived in the midwest since 1994, and I have never seen a snow quite like this. The snow is coated in ice, and solid... you have to really push down hard, or run with a kid in your arms to break the snow. Otherwise, you're just walking right on top of it. Crazy. I feel like such a novice wisconsonite right now.

So we slid all over the yard yesterday, having a blast.

This was Hunter's first time really playing in the snow, he was 6-9 months last year when we had snow.

Joey had a great time, too.

I love this picture of Benjamin.

As soon as I set him free outside, Hunter slipped and hit his nose on the ice. He didn't care, he wanted to play, so I kept wiping him up, and let him play like the "boy" he is, a little bloody.