It Was Quite The Party

Abby's little buddy, Molly, started kindergarten this week. Her parents had a meeting at the school last night, so they dropped their three little ones off at our house to visit for a while. It was pretty late in the evening when they got here, so Kerry had one request of me...to try to keep them quiet and settled down so they could go straight to bed when they got home.

So how do you think I did?


I tried. Really, I did. See? Look at how calm they were...


But then I made the mistake of trying to keep them quiet by putting on one of Abby's favorite videos. It's a sweet little movie of children singing traditional Christmas carols (we watch it throughout the year!), but it obviously had a strange, make-'em-wild effect, and they were dancing all over the place.


I rounded up the troops, introduced the "you have to be sitting" rule, and things seemed to settle down. I even saw a few yawns...


But just when I thought they were settling into the sleepytime trance...


...something would get their giggle boxes turned over, and it would start all over again!


So I finally turned down the lights, grabbed a comfy quilt and some pillows, and they finished off the rest of the little video in peace.


There's not much cuter than seeing those six little munchkins snuggled up together in their jammies!!

I'm Not Going To Tell You The Story...

...but poor Josh had a really rough night last night. I was in the shower because I was about to head out the door for my first homeschool meeting (and I didn't want the other moms there to have any reason to believe I don't get a shower everyday). So Josh was getting all the little ones ready for their bath when he came upon a horrid scene. Now like I said, I'm not going to tell you the story, but I will tell you this...

The story that I'm not going to recount would theoretically have poop as its main subject. And the verbs I would use would most likely be smeared, tracked, and slathered. And the story would probably have a quick line about Josh throwing up in his mouth.

But I'm not going to tell you the story...

I'm not even going to tell you about my first homeschool meeting. Instead, I'm going to let you read this for a good, I-Can-Totally-Relate laugh.

The Results Are In...

Thank you, Lord!! Not only did He answer our prayers about an inexpensive repair, but He also revealed to me a new career path. The labor charge on our bill was $64, and the repairman was here for precisely six minutes. Spread that out over 52 weeks of refrigerator repair, and I could be making $1.3 million a year!!!

To celebrate the good news, the kids got all dolled up to put on a show for me...


(OK, not really. I actually took those pictures yesterday, but I needed to work them into the blog somehow. Aren't they adorable?!?)

Oh, and the repairman told me it would probably be tomorrow before we had ice. But just before I wrote this post, I heard the sweet sound of frozen water dumping into the ice tray.

I like to think of our refrigerator as an overachiever.

They're Rising Up Against Us

Revolt #1:
Went to my session Saturday evening. Had loads of fun shooting photos with my clients. Came home to edit pictures. Photoshop decided it was an independent contractor and no longer worked for me.

Revolt #2:
Had a fantastic night at church. Enjoyed fellowship with wonderful friends. Came home to edit pictures...and eat ice cream. Discovered refrigerator/freezer had had enough and no longer worked for me.

Sigh.

After an hour of diagnosing the problem on Google, I learned the the lovely bzzzzzzzz - click we were hearing is one of two things. The start relay is a fairly simple issue to resolve and costs around $200. The compressor, on the other hand, isn't so easy. It can be done, but it'll most likely cost more than a whole new refrigerator would. Anybody know how much fridges cost these days?

Well, I do, and I'm a bit nauseated just blogging about it.

In the meantime, the deep freezer we keep down in the basement is busting at the seams. We had to put heavy boxes on top of it just to keep it closed. The refrigerated food is nicely packed into coolers and sitting beside the refrigerator.


Clearly, the emphasis is on packed when I say "nicely packed".

But it hasn't all been yucky...

The kids got a treat today. The lot across the street from us was cleared way back for new construction, but as everything did around that time, construction came to a screeching halt before they had even laid the foundation. A group of self-named housewives on our street ("The Weatherford Wives"...yes, I'm serious) mentioned that they had heard the deal was back on and that construction would start soon. So when we came back from our mad dash out to buy ice to try and salvage the food, the kids were squealing with delight when they saw the tractors on our street.

All four of the very loud tractors. Yippee.


Jack clearly wasn't a fan of the really loud noise, but he loved watching the tractors as they were unloaded from the semis.


While we were still in the car, Izzy thought the busy scene was fantastic, but as soon as we got out and she heard the noise, she decided tractors weren't for her.


As long as she stayed with me, though (and as long as Jack kept his ears covered), we had a fun time watching the tractors at work.


There are two other great things to note as well. Our dossier arrived in DC today, and Josh is attending his first seminary class as we speak!

Stay tuned for the diagnosis when the repairman comes tomorrow. (Feel free to pray for a diagnosis of the less expensive issue...gracious knows we are!)

Rainbow Bubbles

I was super-duper excited when I saw that this week's theme on I &hearts Faces was "Bubbles". This photo has always been one of my favorites of Abby (and by "always", I mean since I took it all of five months ago). This shot is a wonderful collision of winter and spring...Abby's decked out in her heavy coat (hood and all!), but she's surrounded by a fantastic rainbow of colors as she's blowing bubbles outside. Love it!


There are tons of fun bubble photos to see, so click on the button below to hop on over to I &hearts Faces!

DaddyDay At Its Finest

Izzy's special "say cheese" face has made a reappearance (click to make the photo larger).

If seminary doesn't pan out for Josh, there's always a career as "The Incredible Balloon Man".

It Doesn't Get Much Better Than a Homemade Tent

I was going through and organizing the My Pictures folder on our computer today when I ran across a folder of photos that never made it onto the blog. A fun thing that we do sometimes after dinner is meet our friends, the Cobbs, at the park that's just down the road from each of our houses. Contrary to what you might imagine, I NEVER take my camera with me. First of all, it's always a wonderful time of fellowship with our friends, and I don't want to miss out by having my left eye plastered to the back of my camera all night. And secondly, six kids (born just four years apart) set loose at the park has disaster-potential written all over it, so the four of us take the "all hands on deck" approach to maintain safety. And sanity.

With that little "Safety First" speech behind me, now it's time to tell you that I did, in fact, take my camera with me on this particular evening. I had just gotten my new lens in, and with a weekend of sessions coming up, I needed to get in some practice. After all, no two lenses are created alike. (Besides, Izzy was occupied with trying to climb on the hanging bar like she had seen Molly do)...


I had heard that this particular lens was difficult to work with when it came to lens flare, so Grace patiently sat while I shot her picture over and over into the sun to see what kind of flare I got.


No flare on this one...but I love it!


With the sun issue checked off the list, it was time to move on to something else. I could get good shots of stationary objects all day long, but catching crisp action shots is a whole different story.


Done...although not very well in the low evening light. The next task was less technical and more about telling a story, which is one of my biggest goals in a photography session. Anyone who knows Izzy knows the significance of this shot...


This next one is just a fun series documenting how difficult it is for little kids to get up into the ridiculously high swings at the park...


And oh, if you could have heard Jack squealing about sliding down this pole like a fireman!


Finally, little Ben seems to be quite smitten with Isabel. He hugs and kisses her every time he sees her, and in this photo, he was even helping her up the steps of the playground equipment.


He's such a sweet little guy!


The last item on my to-practice list was working with color. I love me a good black-and-white photo, but I have the best time grabbing every bit of color I can out of a shot. That's why I particularly love these next two (although Josh loves the first photo more for the fact that Izzy's only wearing one shoe)...



Once I was done with practicing, I couldn't resist the opportunity to get some "just because" shots. I love these little guys...


...and girls.

And Isabel? You can't say she's not determined...


On a different note, we had Bethany's little ones over here for a while today, and watching the five munchkins run around playing reminded me of a couple of photos I took a few weeks back that I never posted (I'm noticing a "forgetting to post" theme here)...



Ahhh, I remember the childhood days of tent-building. So much fun!!