wind

sibling love

Every time I see these two together I realize again and again how Heavenly Father's timing is always right.  They were meant to come to this world close together.  They love each other so, so much.  In fact, I try to do "special time" with each child every day where we do something one-on-one that they want to do.  I have the other child set up on my bed with books and puzzles to keep them entertained for the 10 mins I'm spending with the other child. I thought this would be amazing and that they would eat it up.  Instead, they ask where the other one is the entire time they're having alone time with me.  E always says, "ah, mom, Bud can come, that way he doesn't have to be alone in your room!"

It will rock B's world when E goes off to preschool.  He literally doesn't know what to do when she's not around (it really has only happened a handful of times).  They are buddies in every sense of the word.  Don't get the idea that it's always rainbows and butterflies...in fact, E bit B so hard last night it broke the skin and E has B's teeth marks in a bruise on her chest.  (We're seriously working on that little problem!) but when I ask them if they want to have their own bedrooms, they both start crying and begging to be with each other.  I always tell Nate that they had to come close together because B was in Heaven missing her so terribly that he couldn't wait any longer.

I'm so grateful that I had the faith to say yes when I knew another little spirit was waiting for our family. I was terrified to handle another pregnancy with a baby to take care of, and I battled with that prompting for 5 months before I was finally willing to listen.  How grateful I am that I did-that I was willing to follow a better plan than my own!  They are perfect and bring us so much happiness.  I'm so grateful for their differences and how I've already seen them helping each other through the things that are tough for them.  I'm forever grateful that they will always have a friend at school, and a cheerleader through every big event.  I can't wait to see them grow and take on this world!  What will these little faces do for our world?  Their potential is limitless and fills me with such a sense of responsibility to raise them right.  We love our kindred spirits.

grandma's piano

We have my grandparent's old piano in our home.  Every time I sit down to play, I can see my grandpa sitting in a chair nearby, his cozy sweater wrapped around him, toes tapping along.   How many times he asked me to play for him while I was growing up?  I don't know that I'll ever sit down to play without thinking of him.  The piano has been such a blessing to my family as music fills our home.  I'm proud of the emotion this photo portrays...beauty, music, memories, love.

B loves all things "bad guys" and while I don't want to ruin the beauty and emotion of the photo for my memory, I need to remember what was REALLY happening in this photo.  B was pretending to be Ursula (from Little Mermaid) thus, he's wearing a sweatshirt for his pants, the arms and hood were his tentacles.  And he was POUNDING the piano and singing/yelling at the top of his lungs "Po Defortunedant ZOLS!" (poor unfortunate souls) This went on for a good 15 minutes with me giggling away.

the weather today

We are LOVING this spring weather.  The kids spend most of their time outside with no shoes singing about camping and swimming.  B is obsessed with wearing pants/shirts/underwear on his head and here it's helping him act out "the sky's awake, so I'm awake, so we have to play!" scene from Frozen.  In other news, we are hoping to finally build our new deck this summer and I'm so excited to not be terrified for my children's lives as they play:)  I'll have to take photos from underneath sometime to document and justify my fear.

childhood

When the weather is nice, the kids play in the driveway while I make dinner, I watch them from the kitchen and it's lovely.  Sometimes I send them out with fun things to do, like giving them expired cans of formula with pitchers of water and as many containers as I can gather and letting them go to town cooking for me.  Childhood at it's finest.

self portrait-my family

I'm not sure if it's cheating, but this week I  included my whole family with my "self portrait".  This is our life each afternoon, everyone was just doing what they normally do-I literally just set my camera on the table and jumped in the picture.  I love that E was curled up on Nate's lap, that B was cooing to J who was reaching up to touch his face; and it all happened with that afternoon light pouring in our window.  Nate's work laptop open on the couch, toys strewn about the floor, and freshly picked-up dry cleaning on the chair add chaos to the photo, but this is my life and all of those parts are what makes us work.  As I've mentioned before, I photograph mostly to show that real life is beautiful, real life is messy and noisy and perfectly imperfect.  And if that's true, I shouldn't have to move all clutter out of the photo, because to me...it is part of my beautiful.

My goal is to have more pictures that include my whole family, so here's the start.  E's face is classic and so natural for her.  I love that.

my favorite things

Today my life could be titled, "thwarted".  J and I are leaving for a weekend get-away so I've had  few things here at home that need to be taken care of before I leave.  This means that while I've been busy, the two munchkins have been very busy and the house looks like a total DISASTER. Oiy.  That frustrates me, but I'm going to flow through it.  I'm so grateful that I have people to make my house messy; there's a whole lot of love that comes with the mess and stress.

sunday mornings

fall colors

 I LOVE the fall time; and today, that is my thankful. It's even more fun when I have my very own yard that fills my life with it's changing colors.  This time last year, I posted a picture of the kids running this same sidewalk.  They are taller and faster now, but they still make the daily run...always bare-foot because they are Nate and my children, shoes are an after-thought at our house.  In fact, I normally just keep them in the car because that's the only time any of us bother to put them on.

 Making cool shadows for me to take pictures of (which I will hopefully get around to posting sometime).  Eeds thought this pose was particularly great with her shadow.

 Eden doesn't like having her picture taken (thus the lack of photos of her on this blog), so when she asked me to take her picture today, I JUMPED on that!  She insisted on doing these poses...it was hilarious.  I love this strong-willed child.  Also, I do believe she has the makings of a future yogi. 

And to top it off, a photo of that beloved tree that I am ALWAYS talking about.  You can see now why golden light shoots through my windows all day long.  When we move one day, I'm taking this tree with me:)  I also love seeing my kids playing and laughing in the shot.

This is why photography is so important to me.  I have photography goals that involve producing really beautiful prints, but mostly, I want these small seemingly insignificant moments to be etched on my mind for always.  I don't want to forget mornings like this.  I want to remember them climbing on that rock and jumping right on my bushes and flowers, laughing like crazy, unaware that they are destroying my hard worked landscape.  I want to remember Eden's ponytail bouncing up and down.  I want to remember that she insisted on wearing her hair elastics on her wrist (being a little too tight and causing me to have to contantly remind her to switch wrists in order to give the last one a break).

And a bonus that I couldn't leave out.  Making shadow shapes and mostly being unbelievably adorable.

Halloween

Today is Halloween, and while Jorie is wearing her skeleton outfit, these pictures wouldn't otherwise hint to the day.  They are not typical Halloween photos with my kids dressed up darling and smiling for the camera.  But they do show a beautiful relationship between Brig and Jor.  You wouldn't believe how much he loves his little sister.  He is forever kissing her and calming her when she cries (see pic below).  He says in a SUPER high pitch voice, "Hi, Baby Jorie!" about 2 inches from her face EVERY. TIME. HE. SEES. HER.  I love that this series shows a bit of their relationship.

Look at his little crinkled eyes because he's smiling and trying to make her happy.  He also reached out to grab her little hand and cooed to her "it's ok baby Jorie.  It's ok."

And just because I need to remember it somewhere, I'll add the obligatory costume picture.  Brigg was sobbing because Eden was Elsa and he REALLY wanted to be Elsa too, and Jorie was getting fussy.  So, I just flipped to AUTO (gasp!  It has been a long time since I've done that) and used that horrid flash, but I captured a moment-which I love.  Just act like it isn't on my photography blog:)

Half dressed crying batman (he didn't want to wear his muscles or his mask...you know, the ones he's been wearing ALL month), pink glow in the dark skeleton, and Elsa who didn't want her hair done.  #nailedit

painting pumpkins

We painted pumpkins for FHE tonight.  Golden sunset light was filtering through my window, and the kids were joyful being set free with their paints.

summer camping

This picture is from our family camping trip this summer;  I was just pregnant and lazy and didn't have motivation to document anything:)  I have a lot more pictures, but I have a newborn, a 3 year old, and a 2 year old, and I have small chunks of time to work, so a little at a time will have to suffice:)

I love camping and I think Nate has learned that the key to helping me breath is to get me to the mountains.  I need space.  And I think that particularly for my stage of life, open spaces gives me such new life.  With all the chaos that exists in my home, sitting around a camp fire with nothing around but the swaying pines and aspens, a running river, and chirping crickets is SOUL JUICE to me.  This summer we went up by Monte Cristo (just up Ogden canyon past Pine View Resevoir).  It was beautiful and perfect and needed. 

I just love seeing Brigg's little profile as he was fascinated by the flashlight.  I'm so glad I snapped this photo because he no longer has that pot-belly and that shirt is no where near being able to fit him now (3 months later)!  And now, off to clean up some of that literal spilled milk I wrote about yesterday:)

cabin

We spent UEA weekend at a cabin in Island park with friends.  We had a wonderful time and while I spent the majority of the time feeding Jorie, it was wonderful to get out of the house and be with friends.  Our family all slept in one room which I was nervous about with a brand new baby, but the other kids were awesome and it worked out great.  One evening we went to a beautiful pond/river and the kids built boats with stuff they found along the path to race down the river.  I captured this one and LOVE  this photo.  The spots are gnats which were COVERING the water and the plants growing in the river were a beautiful shade of green.  This photo captures it perfectly.  Isn't the light on the feathers beautiful?

                        Same pond place, just capturing the light coming through the pines.

This is at the cabin.  The kids were in heaven to have some free range and run around in the dirt all day.  They had 4-wheelers which were absolutely the high light for our kids, but I didn't get any photo blog worthy pics of that.  Have I mentioned I had a 2 week old baby?  Nate and I tried our hand at the tandem bike which was HILARIOUS...although, note to self: riding a bike over bumpy dirt roads 2 weeks postpartum is not one of my brightest ideas:)  All-in-all it was a wonderful weekend and a welcome change of pace.

helicopter

Nate got a remote control helicopter for his birthday.  The kids are pretty much in Heaven.  They spent a fair chunk of time outside flying it.  Brigg liked to let it fly from his hand, but sometimes he forgot to let go and the thing would spin and spin trying to fly out of his toddler tight clench.

The focus here is a little off, but I've let go of my perfection that kept me from truly enjoying this blogging thing.  I realized that the important part was me capturing moments with my family.  And my journey of photography is just that, a journey.  This means that while I'm running to grab moments that are not perfectly set and cannot be replayed, there will be pictures that are blurry, and have incorrect lighting that still mean the most to me and melt my mother heart more than a perfectly timed snap shot. 

So here is my adorable, opinionated, passionate, exuberant 2 year old looking into his daddy's eyes anticipating the moment that flight will again take place;  the moment that will make him squeal in delight and run underneath the flying contraption hoping it will drop so he can run it back to the starting line.

Same picture without being cropped.  I have to include this because I love seeing his little eyes looking at Nate.  Have I mentioned I love them?

pirate

12 days old.  While this is no Anne Geddes portrait, I love it so much.  If you even knew how often she has this one eye open while the other is closed!  This perfectly captures our little Jorie the last few days: content to do whatever I need her to do, eating well, jaundice gone, dry hands that are starting to peel, goobers in her eyes (you can see it in her open eye right in the corner), wearing whatever outfit Eden has chosen for her (which is surprisingly often matching and very cute), hair thinning a little (NO!!), adorable eyebrows and tiny little eye lashes.  

Oh, how I want to remember how much I love kissing that tiny nose of hers, holding her little hand while she nurses, having her snuggled on my chest as I rock her to sleep.  I want to remember how tired I am because she spends an hour waking up to eat.  She'll cry for 5 minutes, and then be back in a crazy deep sleep.   But at this point, I'm already up, and the minute I lay down to try to go back to sleep, she'll do it again.  Why not just get her up and have her eat when she does that?  Well folks, because this is Jorie Love we're talking about and she will fall asleep the second she begins to nurse.  Absolutely nothing will awaken her.  I could give her a cold shower and she'd remain fast asleep.  And so, I spend quite awhile each night prepping to feed her, feeding her, and burping her (she takes SO long to burp).  But, that also means a lot of snuggles and I know all too well how quickly that will end and she will be wiggling to get off my lap to explore her world.  And so, I rub my tired eyes and I hold this sweet baby.

And now for your viewing pleasure, and to not leave Brig and Eden out, a little love from them.  

style

 This kid turned 2 this last week.  How did that happen?  It seems like yesterday that we moved into this house 2 days after he turned 1 and suddenly I have two toddlers and a baby on the way.  Suddenly, my sweet, go-with-the-flow B is turning into an (adorable) tantrum throwing 2 year old.  He is good I tell you.  You should see this kid hit the floor when he needs to do something quick to get his way.  Skilled, I tell you, skilled.  The thing he underestimates is that it is so adorable that it isn't even annoying. 

He LOVES to put on any clothing item that he can find.  This morning, that was E's pink headband, E's dress (although you better not try to put it on him the way it was meant to, it must just dangle from his neck.), and of course, his favorite Sunday tie.  To pull off the look, he must also take off any pair of pants that mom tries to put on him.

He is the best!  Also, if you look at his right hand, you can see how swollen his wrist and hand are from his mosquito bites.  Lovely. 

Also, I think you can tell from both pictures that the kids are obsessed with taking the cushions off the couch.  Mostly because it's so fun to both build forts with them and to jump off the couch onto them.  Some of my favorite childhood memories include doing the same thing at my house growing up (I'm unsure about whether or not my mom was aware that we did that...but we didn't get much past her, so I'm guessing she did know.) Regardless, because I have such fond memories of doing it, my children are allowed to do the same.  You're welcome kiddies.

day 138: floaties, just in case

B is obsessed with wearing his swimming gear.  Most days, he takes off his shirt and goes in search of his floaties.  One can never be too careful. 

day 137: jobs

The kids do 2 small jobs each morning.  The first is to unload and put away the silverware from the dishwasher.  B takes them out and hands them to E who sorts them into their respective sections.  The second is to bring all the upstairs garbage cans and dump them into our big kitchen one. 

Do you how incredibly nice it is to have children that are old enough to help with things that are actually helpful?  The dishwasher really isn't that helpful... it takes them FOREVER, mostly because B doesn't always want to let go of the utensil he's handing E.  But, the garbage?  Awesome!  Before they did this little job, the garbage cans would get overflowing because while I remember to take out my kitchen garbage, I don't think about the other ones till it's a HUGE problem.  Good work little ones!  As you can see, it takes two of them to drag the bathroom garbage containing 3 pieces of toilet paper to the kitchen...not really,  E is just very patient with B wanting to help.

day 136: it's about the memories

I got out of the shower this morning and went in search of my children.  I should've known that they would've found the I-pad and gotten themselves a little show.  I love B's paci by his feet, that E had put on her Sunday shoes, and that E was letting B do the holding.  I guess they figured if they were fighting about it, I'd hear them and discover that they were watching a show without permission:)  I love the morning light on their little faces.  And...I pretty much hate all the brown.  I dislike it often, but in pictures it is SO potent.  I need to re-cover those couch pillows ASAP.  The floor and a new couch will have to wait. 

I find it funny how much it bothers me seeing as I actually love brown, and naturally colors in general.  It's just that there is an over abundance in this house.  Tan walls, brown couch, brown cushions, brown carpet, brown wood hutch, brown wood floor.  GIVE ME SOME HAPPY COLOR!!!  Just the wall color and new carpet would do the trick I think.  I'm just needing some juxtaposition between warm and cool colors rather than being ALL warm.

day 104: shape games

I'm always trying to think of new ways to keep the kids entertained and this one was great.  Both kids are working on shapes, so I taped off some shapes with painters tape and we played all kinds of games.  In this photo I would call out a shape and E had to jump into it.  It was a hit!  Sometimes I'd have them run down the hall and I'd yell out a shape that they had to get it once they made it to the living room.  B was pretty upset that I kept calling the "O" a circle.  It is clearly an O.  He would come grab my face and say, "No, Baba!  O, O, O!" whenever I said circle.  Classic.