pass!

Hope your turkey day is filled with wonderful people and food!

i'm so lucky he puts up with me.

365 days 310-313

11-17-12
Busy day.  But I didn't miss!  The husband and I are here enjoying the Holly Jolly Light Parade.  The kids are enjoying the candy.

11-18-12
Another picture from the old buildings outside Circus World.  I seriously need to grab my tripod and a real camera and get a family picture over there before it snows.

11-19-12
We have 8 family members coming and I'm trying desperately to get the house in a livable state.  For some crazy reason, I actually had energy this day and cleaned a ton.  I was shocked - but it was short lived and today was not the same.  It gave me hope for life post pregnancy and baby though!  This shot is of the zen I get when something has been vaccumed!

11-20-12
Another idea that didn't exactly pan out.  That's my shadow.  They can't all be winners.

jus' wondering

We're hosting Thanksgiving this year so I'm a crazy busy trying to ready things.  So this will be short.

But I have a question.  Especially for you educator types.  Today I went into WonderGirl's class and helped with the literacy stations - usually games involving sight words and the alphabet and writing.  The kids are all varying levels of ability.  Today we did a word family activity where the kids would have a card with something on it like "_ig" and then some foam letters to put into that space and make a word, then write that word down.  Like pig, fig, wig, etc.

My job was to help the kids out.  Now I know they are all 5 and 6, but I'm wondering what is normal... since my child is anything but.  I had some boys that only played with the foam letters and made shapes with them, and when I tried to help them they didn't know what direction to put the letters or what the letters actually were or the sounds they made.  I understand they aren't reading like WG and that's fine - but the boys had a terrible time focusing.  They'd stab their eraser, touch the other kid's letters, and after about 4 comments from me would write the letters down.

I've read how schools just aren't geared towards boys way of doing things, but what do I do in a situation like that?  I have a boy now and I'm nervous about how he'll do in school.  I'm not nervous about him being 5 and not knowing his letters or sounds - good golly, that was depressing - but if it's my responsibility to come to show them an activity and they need to fidget, where's the line between fidgeting and being off task?  What do you expect out of kindergarten level boys?

Eeep.  Thanks smart kids!

sundaying

On the way home from an errand with WonderGirl, I drove by Circus World and was struck by how dang perfect the lighting was right at that time of day, right there.  There are a few really nifty old buildings and I just couldn't help myself, I screeched the tires and turned into a parking lot at the last second.  I almost ran home for my fancy schmancy camera, but instead I just captured everything on my trusty iPhone.

Then I headed home and did some scripturing.  As far as Sundays go, today could have been much worse.

Last night

I did this. Playing the blues on a fiddle is cool, but I think what's cooler was that the drummer took this on his cell while still playing drums one handed.

365 days 307-309

 11-14-12
Feet??  Where'd you go??

11-15-12
This shot took a bit of work.  Overall, it's nifty.

11-16-12

I am so blasted tired today that this cell picture was the best I could do.  SO TIRED!!

By the way, y'all are aware I'm trying to keep up the family blog this month as well too?  Well, I IS.

life goals

Last night was Wednesday night, also known as The Night It Takes Me All Thursday To Get Over.  I shouldn't be so negative, but I head to church to lead the activities for the teenage girls but because of the husband's meetings, I also get to do it while wrestling my kids.  It's not pleasant.

Last night one of my counselors led a class on making life goals and how to choose, prioritize and all that.  I didn't expect to participate, because hey, I'm chasing a 3 year old.  But they gave me some paper and my 6 year old got really into it, so I figured I should try.  But I couldn't come up with any life goals, besides potty training children and maybe playing some cool festivals with my band next summer (I had a conversation with my guitarist the other day...  he had called to find out when I was due.  Why am I due just before St. Patrick's Day???  I had wanted to be all settled and ready to play summer festivals which I will be, but why on earth as a fiddler in a Celtic band would I give birth anywhere near the holy gig day?  Ugh on myself, I say).

Check out WonderGirl's life list:

Aren't those awesome??  I wish I had made one at 6 - but I can predict it would have looked something like this:

1. Go to college
2. Be a rockstar on the violin

And we all remember, when I graduated from grad school I had a life crisis since I'd never looked past that point.  And life just sort of fell on top of me in this huge tidal wave of things I'd never planned on within a few months - cross-country move, real job, get married, AK.  It was a LOT to live through.  But I did fulfill my other life dream and joined a band and felt like quite the rockstar indeed.  Everything was awesome.

Until I got pregnant.

Okay. okay, I could live through that - this new mother thing would add dimension to the life I'd stumbled into. Except then I left the country and had to leave my band too.  Anyone who was there knows that leaving the country was far less painful than leaving my band.  They got another fiddler and moved on.  It hurt so much to leave my dream behind.  I came back, kind of joined the band again, started another band, but living an hour away from them made everything less fluid.

And then I got pregnant again... and moved to Wisconsin.

The teacher last night had a little pity for me and my lack of life goals, I think.  She has 4 grown children and has lived in the same house for well over 20 years, and does lots of crazy cool things.  Why would I be so amazingly dull?  But I think I've learned to stop having long-term goals because I have such little control over them, plus I've already done a ton of them - traveling the world and graduating from grad school and all that.  I had new goals after that and as much as I've tried to hang on, that life I had in Georgia is gone.  I'd give anything to have it back, but I have no control over that.  Losing my dreams hurt so badly, I'm just taking life as it comes now.

It's not all bad.  I have short-term hobbies now - I want to learn how to be a better photographer, and that's a fun dream to have.  Although it is a little frustrating to try and teach myself and know no matter how hard I try, my photos will never be as good as actual photographers with kajillion dollar cameras and such.  I try to ignore that fact.  And I'm trying to not live like a hobo.  I can clean a kitchen kind of - that is a HUGE improvement!  I still can't cook, but since I cook for picky eaters, I have no motivation to fix that.

Long term, I want to raise kind, loving, successful humans.  And I'm working my butt off on it.  But there are so many variables - and they have free will to decide how they'll end up in the long run, so I try to not wrap all my hopes and dreams around them.  That's not all that healthy, I think.  Although if they DO end up kind, loving and successful humans, I'll totally take a heap-load of credit and do a happy dance.

In other news, my way cool friend Aubrey who knew me in high school (an unfortunate time, but pre-minivan days) asked me the other day if I ever watched the Lizzie Bennet Diaries because Lizzie reminded me of her. A quick google search found this image, which was discouraging since the Lizzie in the middle looks psychotic:

BUT another google search found the youtube channel for the Lizzie Bennet Diaries webseries which is a vlog adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

It pays to have friends like Aubrey.  What an awesome Monday find!  You should watch them from the beginning and get addicted, but I warn you, you'll watch at 63 webisodes and discover it's only half-way through and then you'll have to wait.  ugh.  That's exactly why I haven't read the Hunger Games yet.  I got into Harry Potter WAY too early and had to wait years between books and movies.  I hate waiting.

Maybe my new dream will be to get a video camera thingy and learn to take videos and edit them and start a web series.  About whatever it is the the Dude is doing in the next room.  Which from the sound of it, is complimenting all his toys for doing a good job.  I'd watch that.

professor reva, camera expurt

I'm going to give you a wee photography head's up today.  I know, the last person to be giving photography advice is me, but I discovered a pretty nifty trick I just had to share, and it works for any camera with a flash - fancy schmancy or point n' shoot.

You know how when you use a flash, it can totally wash out whatever is closest to you and you can't see anything in the background?  our house has terrible lighting, which makes life a little more difficult for me since I never leave the house and take massive amounts of pictures of my children.   Real photographers have external flasses that they can adjust and wiggle around, but I'm not a real photographer or have a job where I can go out buying fancy stuff for my hobby.  One solution is a  Light Scoop, which you can put on your fancy schmancy SLR and it reflects the light up toward the ceiling and diffuses the light a bit.  Here's an example from their website:

See the difference before and after?  It's really awesome and I love mine,  The only problem is, we have really tall ceilings so it doesn't work very well in the main part of the house where we always hang out.  So when WonderGirl had a her huge birthday party here a few weeks ago, I was doomed to either have washed out pictures or to not use the flash at all - which, because of the low light, would result in lots of blurry pictures since kids refuse to ever stay still for a picture.

I went on Pinterest and found lots of ideas, one which was free and super handy.  I made my own thingy to diffuse the light of the flash a tad with a piece of plastic I cut from a milk carton!  I made you a picture to explain:

See?  I cut a piece out of the milk carton, then held it over the flash as I took the picture.  It took a bit of the harshness out of the flash but left me with enough light to get everyone.

Here's an example of a pic the husband took with the pop-up flash on the SLR:

 See, the ones closest up look like ghosts.  I'm the big pregnant blob in the corner handing the husband my make-shift diffuser and asking him to please use it in the next shot.  Which he did.

 See the difference in the color of the table cloth and the closest kid's faces?  It's not perfect, but it was just right to catch all these kids running around the house.

WG doesn't look like a ghost, or a blur, even though I'm using the flash right in front of her!

I took two pics with my point n' shoot, just to be clear this was possible with any camera.  My "diffuser" is resting next tot he SLR.  First, with the flash on:

 Now, flash on WITH my hand-held, handmade, makeshift diffuser:

The map in the background isn't in the dark and the closer camera isn't washed out.  Is it perfect, no, but is it better?  yep, and I have a lots of cute non-blue non-ghost pictures of WG's birthday part to prove it!

You can buy ones that hook onto your camera, and maybe I'll look into those some day.  For now, this free and easy hack worked great.

And yeah, you should totally pin it too :)

365 days 303-306

 11-10-12
In our relationship, I am not the responsible one.  Except for Saturday, when I went through the mail (that I don't understand) and totally weeded it out.  Grown up me!

 11-11-12
Twas raining.

 11-12-12
I found the best place in the house for lighting, and messed around with a backdrop.  And then I listened to some really good music and wanted to know what it looks like when I hear that killer awesome high C that Stuart Duncan plays on Attaboy.  It looks like this.

11-13-12
I went somewhere!!  It's so hard to have inspiration to take pictures when I'm ALWAYS at home or have my arms full of children.  But today a super awesome friend invited me over for lunch and there are train tracks by her house, so I took my pregnant butt, camera and tripod down the street and took the risk of getting arrested for trespassing so I could look artsy-fartsy.  Mission accomplished!

my kids: the human-aholics

This is going to sound wrong coming from a person who generally doesn't enjoy the company of children except for my own... sometimes - but - what do you do with parents or kids who don't like your kids?

That sounds harsh.  Of course everyone adores my children.  Who couldn't??

I mean, really.  These kids amuse the heck out of me.  I woke up with heartburn and nausea last night, and the poor Dude was obviously nightmare-ing.  He was mumbling something for a while then started asking for his plug, so I came in to find it for him.  When I opened the door, he started pretending to snore.  Wait - it's funnier than it sounds.  Lemme try that again.

The Dude: Mmmmmungh.  Whazza noo.  Noo.  FFfffffffft.  I needa my yellow.

Enter me.

The Dude: Uh ...  Hhhhhhngh shhhhhh. Hhhhhhngh shhhhhh. Hhhhhhngh shhhhhh. 

Okay, trust me, at 1am that's hilarious.

Anywho, back to the point.  Have you ever gone to a play date and all the kids disappear in a fit of giggles? Those are awesome.  But have you had others where the kid turns to their mom and asks them why the crazy boy is talking to them?  Or when the parent does everything they can to keep your crazy child away from theirs?  Those aren't the fun play dates.  And what if it's a parent friend you actually have to interact with all the time, and it's just awkward that their kid just doesn't want to be around yours?

And then your have my confused kid who doesn't understand why I'm asking him to not make eye contact with the other child when he's like BUT IT'S A KID!!  THOSE IS MY PEOPLES!!  I can throw all the toys I want at my kids, but all they want is other humans.  I'm kind of nervous that the Dude is going to love the new baby Lenny-style.  Eep.

It does make me all the more grateful for the friends we've made along the way who genuinely and completely love my kids.  It's such a blessing.  I in turn try my brains out to love other kids, but it's so much easier for me if they have a violin in their hands and do exactly as I say.  I'm a much better violin teacher than... well, anything else.  Just ask WG :)

But really - what do you do?