She wanted to be a pirate

Apparently, when Grandma told Olivia that it was time to get dressed, Olivia insisted that she be a pirate. She even had to show Grandma where to find the pirate costume. I'm surprised Olivia knew where it was, and what it was... since the costume was just heaped on the top shelf of her closet. She wore the costume all day, periodically ARRRRRing as she went.

Oh she also had conversations on my cell. Adorable.

It would pretty much go like this...

Hewwo?
Ummm, a CWAIR!
No
Ummmm OKAY
Bu Byyyyyyeeeeeee

it's still cold outside

Alright, so I slept for 9 hours straight the day of this photo. Woke up groggy to an email from my Aunt asking if I was alive, or if I'd gone insane and offed my kids. In her defense, I haven't talked to anyone in the family in at least two weeks. The snow and my job do not mix well together. I shot a photo of my cereal before wolfing it down and heading to work.

Breakfast

Tim insisted I take a photo of the icicle on the neighbors house. It is pretty impressive, given their window is right there for reference. We're thinking it's at least 3 feet long, if not 4. It was sunny today, and I saw water dripping off of it, so I figured I better shoot it now before its gone.

Giganto Icicle

I can't imagine why no one will go outside and take photos with me

Come on people! It's totally double digits outside... thats practically warm compared to a couple weeks ago! Why won't anyone go out and take photos with me so I can practice?! ;)

It took an hour and a half to dig my car out of its parking spot, and then drive home from work today. And it has now snowed non-stop for the last four hours. Can't wait to see my call-off list tonight at work!

Our Azalea bush under ice

The random bush/tree up front

And a shot of the non-stop snow in front of our house

One of my new favorite things

I don't tend to take care of my body. I eat bad foods, I take terrible care of my teeth, and I pay no attention to my skin. Because of the winter, and because of how hot I like my showers - my skin is about as dry as the Sahara. I am also a product of advertising, and therefore got the trial sized Olay Quench. Man, it's amazing. I highly recommend it!

Our own little Linus

Olivia discovered her platypus when she was 7 months old. Ever since Claire was 7 months old, we've been waiting to see what she would attach too. But she didn't... we suspect Olivia was the culprit of that... not allowing Claire to even hold anything long enough to grow attached to it.

Yesterday, we discovered Claire running around the house with her blanket. She had pulled it out of her crib. She's had it in her crib pretty much since day one (she got it in a pj set from Aunt Judy when she was first born... I was so sad when she outgrew the pjs.) Surprisingly, Olivia leaves Claire and her blanket alone....

I think we have a lovey! (First photo is my day 26 photo)

Make a break for it!

Facing down with Olivia in the hallway (you can see Olivia's fuzzy head at the bottom of the photo)

I'm always playing catch-up

Lets see...

Temptation

I gave up soda again, since I started working out... again. I have zero impulse control, so if it's in the house, I'm eating it. Tim won't give up soda. So I have to pretend it's not in the house. Some days are easier then others.

The Brief Thaw

It warmed up to almost 50 for a day, and melted a lot of the snow. Too bad it's cold again

The day we cleaned the kitchen

I am messy. To say the least, really. I'd love to say that my house is a mess because I have two toddlers. Or because I work third shift full time. Or even because I'm trying to start a business. But really, my house is a mess because I hate to clean. I can make the time, and have the ability... I just choose not to. Saturday you could barely walk through my kitchen. I was kinda distraught over it really... so I used getting rid of the youngests' high chair as an excuse to overhaul clean the room. Now, ignore my stove-top... there's only so much a girl can do in a day. My stepmom would like to point out that if I just cleaned a little bit every day, I wouldn't have to spend an entire day cleaning. Yes Karen, I hear you. LOOK no high chair!

My next step for the kitchen is hanging the yearly photos of the girls. I want to hang them so you can see them sitting at our kitchen table, but going down our basement stairs. I'll probably need to borrow my dads little giant ladder. Or better yet, convince him that it's his fatherly duty to do it for me LOL!

because it's easier to show five at a time

Man, I was behind! Last time when I posted this many, I had still editted the photos daily, and just hadn't posted. Today I downloaded a ton of pictures off my camera, so that I could edit them all at once. Oi!

Day 18 - Fishies and Duckies

Day 19 - Who needs to watermark

Day 20 - Desktop disaster

Day 21 - Olivia go to bed

Day 22 - The flip is awesome

I have videos on my flip that I desperatly need to figure out how to upload. They're cute and funny... and apparently I can't figure out how to upload them (even though the instructions literally just say 'plug into computer' and thats it. Hopefully I figure the thing out!

playing catch-up, and confessing

I have had a really long work week at my real job, which has put the photos on the backburner. My boss was off all week, along with another coworker, and so I had a lot of their responsibilities added to me. Add to that the fact that most every night this week has dipped below the zero degree mark (I work about half my time outside) and yeah... in general I've spent all week cold, stressed and sleep deprived. On with the catch-up.

So on the first really bad day, I tried to cheer myself up by listing out the good things that happened that day. It took a while to think of stuff, but it did make me feel better.


Then a message board I belong to was playing a game of photoshop tennis (essentially one person starts by posting a picture, and then each following person adds something to the picture... some pretty interesting stuff comes out of it.) The photo running right now is of all the photographers playing - so I took a new picture of myself. Straight after work, so I'm looking pretty grungy... thank God for the camera in front of my face!


Olivia's new quirk she's developed is to hide her platypus. I think she wants myself or Tim to hunt him down, kind of like her own hide-and-seek... but sometimes we actually can't find him. Of course it was right at naptime this paticular day. No, the platypus you see in the picture is not the right platypus. He's fuzzy pus. He's sub-par. We ended up finding the correct platypus shortly after taking the photo... in a shoe box.


Day 16 will forever be a dark day. It was the day I didn't take a photo. I had intentions. I promised Tim that I would go to bed before 1pm that day... I had been going to bed later and later all week, but getting up earlier and earlier. By Friday, it was definetly taking a toll on me. So I promised myself that I would take a photo when I woke up before going to work. I woke up, I set something up to photograph... and somehow I didn't do it. I don't know how I forgot that I hadn't done it yet, but I remembered when I was on the interstate at 11:58pm that I hadn't done it. Yeah I could fake it and take one, but I would know, and I'd rather just be honest. So instead you get the dark day photo.


And finally, my stepmom got Olivia this duck that claims it grows 100% larger when wet. Well 100% sounded like a ton to me - rather impressive! The packaging said the bigger the glass of water, the better, and that it could take up to 10 days to grow to its whole potential. Twenty days and a giant glass tub later, and the duck is bigger. But not impressively big. It'll shrink back down once it dries out, so I'll take some pics then for comparision - but for right at this moment, I'm unimpressed.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow

Last year, the mer sight of snow would send Olivia into a panic that would have you carrying her to the car. Lucky for her, she had a teeny tiny little sister who very rarely went outside, so she didn't have to brave that snow often.

I caught Olivia standing at our window over the weekend, just enthralled with the snow. I decided then that I needed to take her outside and revisit those white fluffy flakes. Plus Claire had never been formally introduced.

Well Claire never moved from this spot. She eventually started smiling and laughing at Olivia and I, but I was working so hard to get her smiling and laughing that I didn't think to pick up the camera again.


I used this picture as my day 12 for the photo challenge. Olivia was just loving the snow!

Did you know that at the first snow, Target pulls their boots... putting them on clearance, and once their gone, their gone?? Well I didn't. Maybe they don't do that, but that's what the lady who worked there told me when I had attempted to buy boots the day before. Bad mommy that I am never bothered with boots (Hey, shoot me... my kid HATED snow last year... who knew!?) So Olivia went out in tennis shoes. She complained that her socks were "Awww WET!" when she got back in the house. (Claire had boots... sure they're boys boots that are a size too big... she won't notice, right?)

now Tim's sick too

Poor guy... just when I was starting to feel remotely better...

Bad boys Bad boys...

We have such polar opposite next door neighbors. On the one side, a lovely pastors family.. husband, wife, two very lovely kids. Just the best neighbors you could ask for.

The other side... not so much. Its a mom and dad. And their three teenage daughters. And the teenage daughters toddler aged kids. And the numerous boys that travel in and out of the house at all hours. Its... something. The cops have already been out twice this week alone. Nice.

just threw away todays picture :(

I am so sick today. I came home from work early, with full intentions of going straight to bed and never getting up. Olivia for some reason decided she wanted to put my coat on (something she's never done before)... and in my haste to get a photo of it and head to bed, I just used my onboard flash. Man what a bad choice! I feel like I just threw this photo away. :( Lesson learned... no matter how sick or tired... no onboard flash!!!

clearing up a misconception...

It seems that any time I tell people that I'm taking the 365 day challenge, they respond with "Don't you do that anyway?" Meaning take photos every day... and the answer is No way! I work third shift, and come home to two toddlers every day. Many times, the last thing on my mind is taking photos! So it truly has been a challenge keeping up taking photographs every day.

These are Olivia's Yo Gabba Gabba's. She lines them up just about everywhere, and that day happened to be on the window sill. Shot this literally moments before heading off to bed for the day.

And today we had tuna noodles for lunch. Claire was wolfing it down like she had never eaten before in her life. I knew she was close to done when all of us were breaking out into razzes.

dark and moody

Trying for a different mood to my photo. Not sure how I feel about it yet. In any case, our new sheets.

Claire in her winter coat

I have a tradition that I started with Olivia, and have continued with Claire. With Olivia, I take a picture of her in my wedding dress around her birthday. I think I saw it originally from another photographer who was on Oprah, and swore I would do it with my kids. Since Claire and Olivia are almost 18 months apart to the day, I take Claires picture in the wedding dress around her half birthday.

Since Claires birthday is in December, photographing her in the dress then would be cruel. Instead, her yearly photograph is in my nice winter coat (which unfortunatly, due to having children, is a tad too small for me right now.) My plan is to take half birthday pictures of Olivia in the coat as well, but she wasn't cooperating today. I'll try again soon though.

Since not everyone has seen Olivia's pictures in the past, I'll post those too.

First Claire in my coat. Always one long shot, and one closer up.

And Olivia at one year, and then two years:

And finally, Claire at 6 months

I said I'd make it more interesting... so I photographed....

Okay so maybe I lied on the more interesting photo. My mom made the girls and I stuffed pasta shells, and the texture of the cheese was a little weird, and caught my attention... so I photographed it. I assure you it tasted amazing. Very cheesy!

Mario Kart!!

My sister got Mario Kart Wii for Christmas, and let Tim and I borrow it. We pretty much spent all last night playing while the girls slept. I promise to make todays picture a little more interesting then this one!

Victor

So I spent day three learning different techniques for using my speedlight. Turns out I'm terrible way more times then I'm good. After about an hour of frustration, I reverted to tried and true methods. Victors our youngest cat, and the one that tends to hide from every living being except Tim and I (poor thing.) See, proof that I have a third cat. Now on to more speedlight practicing!

Day two

So my 365 challenge is pretty loose-ended. My goal is to simply take a photo, of anything, every day. I was a little afraid that if I put more rules to it, I'd give up sooner.

Olivia was laying around on the couch this morning... very cute. I asked her if she wanted to take a nap, and she sat up and had a conversation with me. I didn't understand a word she said, but I love the picture I got during it.

365

There's a challenge going on one of the message boards I belong to, where a group of people are taking photos every day for a year straight. I decided what the hey... I'll do it too. Actually, if you've been following the blog since day one (or at least read all the way to the beginning) it is on my list of things to accomplish at some point in my life. No better time then now, right?

So what better way to start then with a self-portrait. I really really need to get a remote for the camera... setting the timer and then running to a chair does not a pretty self portrait make. See the amazing coat!? Christmas gift from the parents.... love it!