My ballerina

Gretchen is now taking very beginner ballet classes at the Y. Today was her second day of class. She is very fickle about it. One minute she loves it, the next she wants to leave. I'm finding that if I just drop her off, then go take the boys to the play center and drop them off, I can then watch her from afar and she does fine. It's when I'm sitting right in the classroom with her that she wants to go home. She enjoys the dancing, and does all the moves well for a beginning 3 year old dancer. She's just so stinkin' cute!

Austin's Invention

Another week, another theme for I Heart Faces. This time it is Photojournalism. Our definition of Photojournalism for the sake of this challenge: Using an image (or images) to tell a story.

I love this series of photos of Austin. He loves to build - with blocks or anything else he can get his hands on. When we went out to my mom & dad's over the 4th of July holiday, he was in Heaven! So many "treasures" to play with. Grandpa tends to have a lot of things around the farm, and Austin eagerly found a quite place away from the craziness and just started creating. I love watching his mind work through his hands. He is going to do big things someday, I am sure of it!

Faceless Photos - today's inspiration

Over at the inspirational blog post for the day was on photos that don't necessarily have faces in them. This brought to my mind one of my very, very favorite photos that I took last summer while at Gearhart Beach, Oregon. Thanks to Twila and Susan I was able to do some fun editing of it. Hope you like it.

Peaches!

We decided to go pick peaches this morning before our playgroup date. The kids picked a bunch that weren't quite ripe, but we still got a big boxful of yummy ones. Now I'll just have to get them all skinned and chopped up and into the freezer so that I can make jam out of them once the kids go back to school.


They enjoyed riding the farm tractor back to the farmhouse.

We took some time to play in the pea pit. It's like a big sandbox only with dried peas - dusty, but lots of fun.

We even said hello to the goats and ducks on the farm!

Late Night - Early Morning

I'm not sure what to call this - it's late at night, or early in the morning, whichever way you want to look at it. Basically - it's an "I can't sleep" kind of night. I tried - I went to bed around 11:30, after watching the late night news. I laid in bed for an hour, after smooching my hubby good night, and listened to him quietly snore away. It's so easy for him to fall asleep - good night, kiss kiss, head on pillow, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Not for me, though. My mind just won't turn off. It thinks about the things that happened during the day, and mostly the things that DIDN'T happen, meaning my unfinished to-do list. It's always so long! And so I get up, and I write things down, and make a new list. Because that's what THEY say to do - those experts that tell you the tricks to falling asleep fast. Yeah, well, it didn't work - again! So I found the season ending episode to Grey's Anatomy, which somehow I missed, and watched that on my computer. And halfway through, Daniel came upstairs in a half-asleep whimper, saying his leg hurt. I cuddled him, prayed over his leg, and tucked him back in. That was an hour ago, and here I still sit. Mind, please turn off. Please go to sleep land. I really, really don't want to finally fall asleep, only to hear my kids start to get up for the day!

Tomorrow - or today, I guess - is another day. I WILL get things done - maybe not everything on my list, but I will accomplish things. And it will be a good day, no matter what gets done. I will play with my children, and I will clean my house, and I will prepare dinner for my family, and it will be a good day.

Good night, moon.

Beach Fun photo challenge

This week's contest is Beach Fun, and I had lots of fun beach photos from our trip to the Oregon Coast last summer. I chose the one below with Austin looking up. I thought it was an interesting composition. When I took the photo, I was trying to just get all of our feet in it, with all of us looking down, and just as I clicked the camera, Austin looked up. But when I looked at it later - I actually loved it. Hope you do, too!

Fat Quarter give away!

I love fabrics, and have really been getting into quilting more and more lately. I recently found a couple new sites to drool over!



Jaybird Quilts is teaming up with Fat Quarter Shop for a great giveaway. They are giving away a fat quarter bundle of fabrics from Moda Fabrics - Pure by Sweetwater. These are some very yummy fabrics, and I'm crossing all my fingers and toes that I might win. But I've also had a chance to look over both sites, and have found lots of inspiration and great fabrics. So hop over to Jaybird Quilts and see what you can do to enter to win these cute fabrics!

Shades

The challenge over at I Heart Faces is "Got To Wear Shades". I chose this photo of Austin taken in February 2009 - all dressed in his fireman jacket and hat and ready to go!

Row Robin

I'm doing a swap in my quilt group, Frayed Edges, called Row Robin. Basically, each of us starts with a row for a quilt, and then you pass it to the next person, and they make a row to go with it. They don't sew it on to your row, because you'll want to arrange all the rows you get yourself. It has been so fun! Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to take photos of the rows I make! At the next meeting I'll have to take photos of all my rows. But I do have a photo of my latest row, and I really like how it turned out!

End of Swim Lessons

Today was the end of two weeks of swim lessons for the kids. It was a really good two weeks. The kids did an amazing job. They did what their instructor asked them to do, and had fun doing it. And none of them sank to the bottom! I'm pretty certain that Austin thought he was going to sink, but he really did well. They all got their report cards, and the graduated to the next level, but we probably won't do swim lessons again until next summer. But I'm really proud of them!