in case you haven't noticed . . .

I put up a new blog banner. Like it? Yeah, me too. Funny, I actually do love peas. So do Gennie and Josiah . . . Gennie loves them mixed into her mashed potatoes and won't eat potatoes without them. And as you can imagine we have quite a stockpile of little jars just like this in our pantry . . . anything it takes to get the boy to eat veggies.

Anyway, I'm quickly running out of "peace" quotes to use for banners. . . I have two more in mind so far . . . but I need more. Here are the ones I've used:
- Visualize world peace
- peace, love and happiness
- give peace a chance

I need your help. Leave me a comment on here with your best "peace" quote that I can use for a banner . . . no profanity, tho . . . my parents read this . . . and if I pick yours for a future banner, there just may be a fun surprise in store for you. Anybody?

10 months old . . . for 3 more days

So, I figured I'd better get these on here before Thurs when he turns 11 months old. Yeah, I'm right on top of things. He doesn't look much like a baby anymore - he's a little boy now. Here's what he's into:

- he's got the crawling thing down. And he's really quick.

- he often stands up alone without holding onto anything, straight from a sitting position.

- he's taken steps unassisted! His record is 4 in a row, but I was the only one who saw it. Bummer for Kev.

- he doesn't like oatmeal and still loves the rice cereal.

- he's learning to use sippy cups, although he still won't hold his own bottle. He knows how (because we've caught him when he thinks we're not looking) but wants us to do it for him.

- he gives great hugs and slobbery wet kisses. Especially to his daddy.

- he only says "mamamamamamama" when he's mad or wants to get down, but calls both of us "dadadadada" when he's happy to see us. Nice.

- he loves to wrestle, especially on the floor with Gennie on her SpongeBob couch. They flip it over and crawl all over it and he growls.

Love that boy!

wedding sneak peek #2

So, as promised, here are a few more of my favs from Mila and Dave's wedding. I have a ton more that I loved . . . well, all of them, really . . . but they would take forever to post so I'll just give you these. As I worked thru these I realized that I truly LOVE what I do. If I got to shoot everyday I would be so happy. I do get to take all the photos of my kids that I could ever want but there's something about getting to shoot for other people and capture them at their best . . . like weddings . . . or at their worst . . . not too many of those yet . . . that makes it all the more special to me. Anyway, enough schmultz . . . here they are:

And I love when I get totally surprised by a picture. This next one I shot with my biggest lens from behind a bush, and it was actually a shot of the whole hoopa (the tulle canopy) area with the bridesmaides and groom and preacher and half of the crowd. But when I got it onto the computer and was looking thru the ceremony shots I realized I got this awesome picture of the bride and her daddy . . . the look of pride on his face says it all. Wow, goosebumps.


And I LOVE how the grooms brother politely looked away for the kiss. Had to keep him.

Their table decorations were so cute with the apples. Of course, after 8 hours in the sun at 105 degrees they became baked apples so several people took them home to eat with vanilla ice cream.

Father-Daughter dance to "Dancing Cheek to Cheek":

Weddings . . . love 'em!

our house's outside

So, as promised, here is the front of our house. Yes, it's on a slight slope . . . no, i'm not cocky-wallered . . . and I took this with my camera phone and it doesn't do horiz photos very well. The house looks smaller from the front but it goes back pretty deep on the lot and is almost 3000 sq. feet total. And since we have that big yard in the back it's nice that the front yard is not so big . . . cuts down on mowing time. For some reason the previous people liked to advertise their BBQ dinner nites and cooked in the front yard . . . we plan to use the back deck like most of America.

So there it is. Moving day will be July 5th so I'll post photos of that with all our friends and their trucks to help us. Only 2 weeks to go!! Wait . . . what did I say?!?!?

Happy Father's Day

So, Happy Father's day to all you dads out there. My own is on a missions trip in Rio Chico Mexico so I can't hug him right yet but he'll get his when he gets home this weekend. Happy Father's Day to Richard and Pat, too, since I know you both read this!! Hope your day was great!
Anyway, here's a photo from our lunch yesterday . . . we went out for Chinese . . . love me some egg rolls. He still hates having his picture taken - like most husbands I know - but I got him to kinda smile for one shot. I got another of him but he was being a turkey and stuffing his face so I wouldn't take the photo. I showed him! But I won't put it on here because I value my life. :) I think this is gonna be one of my favs for a while. He was having a really good day . . . his legs were feeling good finally so we were all in a good mood. Makes such a big difference to not be in dull but constant pain!

I love you, Kev! Happy Father's Day!

and we'll plant veggies and raise chickens and sit in our rockers on the porch and watch the sun go down . . .

So, maybe not the chickens, and our porch is only about 3 feet square and doesn't face the sunset but WE'RE BUYING A HOUSE!!!! I've been saving up a bunch of blog time because this is gonna be a long one but we wanted to show you the place. 4 Bedrooms, 2 baths, 2 living rooms (kind of), huge laundry room and more storage than we've had in all our other places combined. I told Kev we'll have to go out and but stuff just to use the storage . . . he wasn't thrilled. We're closing on June 30 and are currently waiting on the appraisal but when that comes back as long as it appraises right it'll be a done deal. Kev went to the home inspection yesterday and took these photos for me . . . I was home with the kiddos . . . and the inspector guy said there's nothing wrong with the place, just some maintenance stuff that needs to be done and little quirks that come with an older home (built in 1953).

So, the moment you've been waiting for -

Ta -Daaaaaah!!!

A walking tour of our house:

This is from the front door, looking thru the first living room into the sunken second. Hardwoods in the first and new carpet in the second. The second has a pellet stove and instead of brick the whole wall/chimney part is rock. I love the sunken part . . . very 1970's which is my favorite decade.

This is from the sunken living room looking back at the front door area. The bedrooms and baths are down the hallway in the right corner of the photo, and that half wall is the staircase to the downstairs. Notice the fabulous yellow wall . . . must have been just waiting for me to come and live here!!!
This is from the sunken LR looking into the dining room. Never had a dining room before . . . we'll have to get some chairs for our table. The sliding door leads to the back deck and 2 back yards . . . but we'll get to that in a minute.
From the dining room to the kitchen; dishwasher and stove and fridge come with; all new flooring and cabinets just put in for the guy to sell the house. Next to the slider there is a hallway that leads to the master bed and bath.
Master bedroom. Yes, that is cedar paneling painted what could only be called a faded version of mauve . . . who paints cedar!!??!?!?! . . .with wine carpet. Ghastly. But we'll get it changed out as the money becomes available. Huge room, tho. And that slider leads right onto the deck.

Also in the master is a little wood stove. . . we'll see if we use it . . . seems a huge danger to little toddler hands, etc. And two separate HUGE closets. And half of our inspector guy.

Directly connected to the master is what will be Josiah's room. It has a door to our room and a door to the hallway. No, I didn't dink around with the color . . . yes, it is painted an awful peach-orange color. That will be gone before we move in.

Next down the hall is what will be Gennie's room. Can you believe they CHOSE that carpet!?!!? It's gonna take a ton of primer to get rid of that blue wall because she wants the walls the green color from her color scheme . . . I vetoed the whole room pink because with all the pink in the scheme I would have to put on goggles just to go in her room.

The two bathrooms are both upstairs but I didn't put in the pix of them . . . who hasn't seen a bathroom? And now we head down the stairs into the basement. Bear with me, that paneling gets much, much worse but we have plans to fix that very soon.

Told you it gets worse. Kinda looks like what I would imagine living inside a tree trunk would look like. This is the great room downstairs, and that door in the next photo leads to the 4th bedroom, also paneled but just the regular kind.

And apparently they couldn't find enough of that tree bark paneling . . . around the bedroom doorway they used square pieces of it in a checkerboard design. It's hard to be down there for very long without going a little dizzy with the grain pattern. Oh well, it's coming out very soon.

This laundry room is thru a door across from the futon the the last photo. This is only half of it. It has this much again, then a door that leads to a separate storage room full of built in shelves. Yay, places to put stuff away!!!

See that door in the back of the last photo? That leads to this:A staircase that leads to the ceiling. I guess it used to be like a storm cellar staircase that lead to the outside but when they changed what was the garage . . . TINY . . . into the sunken LR and added the dining room, they cemented over the outside door so this doesn't go anywhere. Fun, tho!

This is the deck and the 2 backyards. That fence on the right separates the 2 parts and that over there will be Maggie's yard. It has 2 sheds for yard stuff and in the very back you can see the outdoor fireplace BBQ. The chimney is falling apart but the grate is still there and it's still usable if we want to.

This is Maggie's yard, and we get to keep all that flagstone to use in the yard! At the very front of the fence, like right where Kev was standing to that the picture, is the gate into the other part of the yard where the deck is.

This is the other part of the yard, taken from the deck. Plenty of room for the sand box and swingset. And that back fence is actually about 4 feet from the actual back fence and conceals a huge planter box area that runs the width of the yard. Not sure why they put up the front fence to cover it but at least we can plant back there if we want.

The yard needs some work obviously but we'll get to that as we can. We're soooooo excited to finally be buying our own home after 8 long, long years of renting. And this place needs a little work but it's mostly cosmetic so we'll just have a running lists of projects to be working on.

And Kev forgot to take a picture of the front of the house so I'll post that later, after the next time we go by there.

Anyway, I told you it was gonna be a long post so hopefully you're still with me. I'll keep you posted as we get closer to closing and moving day - we're looking at moving our stuff in on July 4-5. Guess it's a good thing we didn't have plans for 4th of July weekend!

Sarah & Kenai - sneak peek!

I had such a fun shoot this last weekend. . . I got to chase this little guy around the island and take his pictures. Sarah is a friend from church and she just got him a few weeks ago. He's a 15-week-old toy Australian Shepherd, named after the town of Kenai, Alaska. He cooperated really well at the beginning, but I think he was a little hacked that he didn't get to go swimming in the river so by the end he'd had enough. He even walked himself back to her car and was sitting patiently waiting to get in! Soooo cute. Thanks for letting me play, Sarah! Hope you like them!

update

So, while visiting with my fam at the wedding, I realized I've been a little late in letting you know what we've been up to. I talk about the kids all the time but haven't told you about Kev much. The biggest news with him is that he's completed his first semester of credentialing for his teaching certificate. He's decided he wants to be a classroom teacher, probably 5th-6th-7th-8th grade . . . somewhere in there. He's doing the coursework online thru a school in AZ that is accredited with the state of WY so he can get a position here in GR. Wow, lots of initials. Anyway, he is on schedule to finish his schoolwork and student teaching in time to be eligible for a teaching position in the fall of 2010. He'll start at the same time Gennie starts kindergarten. Ahhh, did I really just say that??!! Kindergarten???!!!

Other than that, we've been battling our way thru several flare-ups of his bone disease . . . lasted about 5 weeks this time . . . but finally today he woke up feeling much better and actually got his dress shoes on for work. He went to softball practice yesterday and took it easy so he isn't all broken for the games this week. He LIVES for softball every summer and was really worried that he wouldn't be able to play this year but it looks like we're on the upswing of this flare-up so we'll see. He says playing baseball on the video games just isn't the same.

More updates to come . . . have to go let Josiah out of baby jail before he climbs out by himself. :)