dear neglected blog, i still love you

oh my goodness, how did i get so behind... again? in the busyness of daily life, my poor blog has been one of the back burner items lately. we've been keeping very busy getting ready for stan's upcoming deployment and spending as much family time as possible together. So here is my week in review... starting with the cushy kissing reindeer slippers from target's dollar section. who knew slippers could be such fun?!

my wild little pumpkin princess with one of her self-thought-out poses after school. :)

torrey and daddy snuggling up on the couch for a daddy/daughter moment. she's going to have a bit of a hard time when he goes, i think. not that it doesn't have its effect on all of us, but this age for torrey seems to be ushering in the beginning of the tween changes for her... and daddy seems to have a magical way of teaching and growing her up. let me just say a special prayer of thanks to the person who invented the webcam!

darn daylight savings time messing with my natural light options! lol. so there may be two dozen more pictures of my christmas tree as i come into the end of the year! loving that lensbaby creative aperture deal, though.

can i just take a minute to say how much i love my husband? for the amazing man who will do just about anything {even wear green tights} for his girls... i'm pretty sure there's a special place in heaven for that man! we spent halloween night running around our usual stops visiting my parents, grandparents, great uncle, and friends from church as the neverland family - peter pan, wendy, john and tinkerbell. the man in green tights survived the whole ordeal and earned himself some serious points with his house full of estrogen!

being a little behind and backwards on our holidays, we didn't get to the pumpkin patch until the day before halloween. after school on friday, we rushed home and changed the girls out of their costumes and into some regular clothes for a quick jaunt to the pumpkin patch. (hence the eye makeup on emma.) the girls searched the muddy patch for their perfect pumpkins. i have a bunch more pictures here. it was definitely a very fallish day with the leaves whirling around in the wind. makes coming home to carve them with hot apple cider that much more special, though.

now i've gotta zip off to help with a veterans day project at the school! ah, the perfectly content and busy life of a mom. i wouldn't have it any other way!

in the waning light

being one who takes almost all of my pictures with natural light... the changing of the season is sure having an effect on my daily life! it's getting kind of hard to sneak in a natural light picture when the girls get home from school. by late afternoon so much of the light is already gone. guess it makes for a good reason to learn how to use my flash better... today i played around with the lensbaby and the creative aperture disks again. i gave the heart a try today with torrey. thought the irony of her grumpy face and the hearts sort of flying away worked. i did get a bunch of her smiling too here.

we have theis amazing japanese maple in our backyard that turns the most vibrant shade of red in the fall... then gets even brighter when it's wet with rain. i completely missed getting a picture of it since it dropped all of its leaves suddenly one day. well, by golly, i wasn't going to miss it this year! so the past couple of days i ran the girls out there for a few shots by the red tree. there are a few more shots of emma here.

this was one of those i-missed-the-opportunity-to-use-natural-light moments. so i grabbed my flash {nikon sb600}, used my on camera flash in commander mode... and did my best.

on a scrappy note... my very favorite scrapbook store is making bunches of cards for service members on veteran's day this year. they asked if i'd write up a blog post for them... which you can see here. if you're in the area & would like to come by the store to make cards for soldiers on veteran's day, there's a bit more info here. we hope to see you there!

i also have a new layout up on the ella blog along with my fabulous ella friends. the super cute tami morrison wrote the post up. while you're over at ella, check out stacy julian & lain ehmann's latest book "20 simple secrets of happy scrapbookers".

a week flies by

so here i am behind on posting again! so once again, i'll do a quick sum up of our week with project 365 pics...

spent most of the week just keeping busy with daily life... scrapping, family time and the lot. we're down to the last few weeks of having stan at home, so we've definitely been packing in every moment of family time possible. playing yahtzee, having breakfast together, reading together, wrestling around... you know, just the perfect little moments that make everyday life wonderful.
 

saturday we all slept in & stan made one of his yummy breakfasts. lucky us! we never eat as well when he's away! after breakfast emma and i headed downstairs to brush our teeth. while we were downstairs i checked her little wiggly teeth. those babies were definitely ready to come out. so i pulled them out for her & she ran upstairs to show daddy her new toothless smile. there are a few more shots here. good thing the tooth fairy had some cash on hand for her visit.

after the toothy excitement had waned a little, we pulled out our boxes and boxes for christmas decorations. yes, i know it's not even halloween yet, but well, we're celebrating christmas a little early this year. on deployment years, we always put up our christmas decorations before stan leaves. by the end of the day the tree was up & decorated. by sunday we had most of the garland up and ornaments hung from the kitchen ceiling. it's beginning to look a lot like christmas here! all of this early decorating does add to the sadness a bit... knowing that it's all up because stan's not going to be here. still, i'd rather decorate and celebrate together. just something magical about the whole thing.

with the tree and lights up, i figured it would be a good time to mess around with my lensbaby & the creative aperture star-shape thingy. (it's a cool little disk that slides into the lensbaby and changes the lights into star shapes.) the picture above is an ornament my great grandma made for me when i was in junior high. when we were decorating the tree together, i was telling the girls where all of the different ornaments came from... i was thinking, man, i'm the only one who really knows where all of these came from! note to self: take pictures of ornaments & tell their stories at some point.

well, i'm now all caught up... well at least for another 29 minutes until the clock strikes midnight & i'm behind again! lol.

world card making day, baby... oh & a lensbaby, baby!

so today was world card making day. as i often say around my house, "honesty is policy"... so truth be told, i did not make any cards on world card making day. ::gasp:: instead, i spent the day with my sweet family. with stan's deployment in the not too distant future, we're squeezing in every minute of family time we can. we met up with a friend this morning who was working on a photography project for her masters. she took some pics of our family for her project... we laughed a lot, and ended with a family breakfast at one of our favorite local breakfast joints. you know, one of those places that's called one thing, but everyone in your family calls it a "pet name"? ok, maybe that's not normal...

anyway, after some inspiration from denise & hubby this morning, i decided to pull out my lensbaby. i picked it up back in july, but with the craziness of the chief's initiation, i didn't really get around to experimenting with it. it's a cool selective focus lens, which you can read all about on their site. i took a bunch of pics of the girls outside. emma pulled me aside part way through, and asked if she could sing me a song she made up. seriously, it was the cutest thing ever. all about enjoying being out in the wind in nature & how good it is to love God. how could you not help but pick her up in a giant hug and swing her around after that? well, i couldn't help it, anyway. there are more of the lensbaby & singing pictures here.

we topped the evening off by watching the 50's musical, funny face. the girls get such a kick out of watching fred astaire dance. after trying desperately last night to get halfway through 2001 space odyssey... the pace of the movie was a welcome change. if you don't remember watching it when you were younger (we didn't) or think it's a good idea to rent... let me just give you this little tidbit. i didn't realize that they were going to show just how long it would take to go to jupiter in REAL TIME. holy moly. after an hour and a half into the movie, you finally figure out the first tidbit about the plot. wowza. we didn't exactly make it through the second half... we changed it out for guys & dolls. hurray for 3 movies, 3 days, 3 dollars!

like i said before, we're getting close to deployment #6, and for webcam ability purposes it was time to update stan's laptop. amazing how quickly computers are obsolete, isn't it? well, i've been talking to him for months about switching over to a mac when the time came. i believe the phrase was, "once you go mac, you never go back." my darling husband, who is not keen on technological change, in a moment of weakness, caved. he came home with a new lappy... and he LOVES it. he has said, no less than 10 times in the past two days, "you were right!" that is one MIGHTY mac! hee hee. (and yes, i'm pretty sure he'll never go back!)

and since it was world card making day, i figured i'd share a couple of cards i made for lasting memories, using the my mind's eye's christmas line. so there it is. out little weekend i, so far, in a nutshell. hope yours is wonderful & family filled.