Lashes & Curls...

Better than coffee

Not many things are better than coffee when you first wake up.  But, I bet daddy will take these group hugs from his boys over coffee any day of the week.  I know I would!

Dude what are you doing?

Lil' Cougs

I could just stare at these two little men all day long.  I know they are mine but I think they are so handsome!  Oh and GO COUGS!  I don't care that you lost.  We had fun sporting our Coug gear all day long and not to mention Henry yelling Go Cougs to some serious Husky fans at gym class.  Perfection. ;o)

Girls Trip!

Back in mid-September I was able to get back over to Lake Chelan with just a fabulous group of ladies.  Lots of laughs, wine, Moose beer drinking games, dancing and good ole' fashion kid free fun.  Love you ladies and hope to have many more memories at Senor Frogs with you all. ;o)

The first "talk"

Last week my girlfriend Camille was up from Portland visiting and joined me to pick up the boys at their preschool on Friday.  When we arrived Oliver's teacher asked if it was ok to chat, meaning in front of my friend.  Being that Camille is pretty much my soul sister, I let her have at it.  Well....little Oliver gave her a run for her money and mommy got her first "talk."  He bit a little girl twice on the face and her mom freaked out.  I can understand why she freaked out.  Now that I have a biter I'm a bit more understanding of that parent too.  If you would have asked me a year ago before Olie arrived I probably would have been that parent that freaked if Henry got bit...twice in one day.  Basically, I was told he was playing mean and is becoming disruptive to the class.  Awesome.  Then I was asked, "what are you doing at home to address this behavior?"  I will admit I felt about as big as an ant and felt like I was being treated as though I am not addressing the behavior.  I wanted to say well I bite him back.  But realized this wasn't the time for jokes.  Over the weekend the director of the school and I spoke and we came to an agreement on the approach of redirection, trigger words, positive praise for good behavior and catching the biter (my kid) before it happens (meaning hover parent).  So, today he attended class and there was no biting.  But we have now transitioned into what they called "pushing."  However, after discussion she realized he wasn't pushing he was using other kids like furniture to pull himself up to a stand so he can walk.  He wants to walk all the time but the poor kid can't figure out how to get to a stand without a bit of help, i.e. another kid and his face.  So, we are practicing standing and let's hope next weeks class he's the angel we all know he is.  For now, our 13 month is not booted out of preschool but mommy did switch him to 1 day a week vs. 2.  We are trying to keep our report card detention free before we hit kindergarten!

"M" Word....

I've taken a few basic/intro to digital photography classes and have gained a lot of tips along the way. But, I'll bring home notes and notes and notes and they just stay buried in the bottom of my camera bag. I vow each time to practice and really start using my camera the way it is suppose to be used and get my own creative touch in my photos. However, for some reason (I don't know maybe my two little monkeys hanging on me all day long) I don't practice. So, what do I do...allow the camera to use it's brain and use in auto or pretty darn close to auto. So I discovered this great group, Mamas With Cameras, signed up for their class about using your camera in manual with live models and walked away feeling much more confident to give this a whirl. I often feel like I'm going to miss the moment if I'm trying to put together a puzzle piece of scientific data each time but really it's not so bad. Just a few key things to remember and just getting comfortable with my camera. Yes, the practice thing. I'm on it. I am proud of my photos I got out of the class with the live models (babies!) in manual mode with little if any post processing and gained the confidence to learn more and starting using MY brain not the cameras! Here are a few of my favorite pics I took during the class: