picture post

I seriously need to be cloned.  I have about 5 important things that I need to be doing right now, each one requiring between 1 and several hours of work.
1. Laundry.  There is a sour smell coming from the laundry room.  I have a feeling there is a load in the washer that has been neglected.  Also I know there are 3 other baskets that need to be folded and put away.  And I also know that at least one of my boys is seriously behind on his laundry.  Do I break down and go into his room and get it?
2. Cub scout stuff.  I am finally being released!  I have mixed feelings, as always, because I really had fun in that calling.  But now I need to transfer all my records to an excel file to send to the new leader.
3.  Seminary prep.  I need to be preparing my lessons next week so I can get more than 4 hours of sleep a night on seminary weeks.
4.  More seminary prep.  I feel totally lost with scripture mastery.  I need to do some serious internet research and figure out some fun and effective ways to do this.
5.  Pictures from the Stake dance last weekend.  I got asked to be the photographer for the big adult dance this last weekend.  It was pretty fun-- someone had really nice strobes that I got to use for lighting.  I've never used them before, and it was cool.  Of course, midway through I somehow messed up my settings and I'm pretty sure some of the shots are overexposed.  Ugh.  I get so mad at myself when I do stuff like that.  Oh well, they are free photos anyway, so you get what you pay for, right?  Anyway, I was NOT planning on doing ANY editing on these photos at all, but I'm going to have to.  The backdrop they had there was cute, but not big enough, and I'm definitely going to have to do some cloning work for some of the taller couples.  I'm kind of dreading this, it's going to take a couple of hours at least, and then I have to figure out a method of getting the pictures out to all the wards.

So that's what I should be doing.  Instead I'm going to update my blog since I've been so negligent.
I'm just going to post some pictures and commentary instead of going back day by day the last couple of weeks.

Airsoft Warriors!  The boys had some friends over on Friday for an airsoft war. We've now got little bb's all over the backyard.  They are supposedly biodegradable, but I'm not sure how long it's supposed to take!

Brigham's new shoes.  We looked long and hard for these shoes, taking a couple of different trips to different  Targets.  You can also see the mouthful of metal he's got.  Poor kid!  It is hurting him less now.  He had a couple of miserable days last week.

 Me and my brand-spankin' new returned missionary brother, Christian!

Happy Mosey.  We've had some beautiful "winter" weather around here, and last Thursday for our art group we stayed outside and made driveway murals.  Mosey has a really cute way of running when he's happy-- I didn't quite capture it here, he waves his arms way up in the air.  But you get the idea.

My most wonderfully pudge-a-licious nephew Jacob.  Oh how I love this kid!  He is 6 months old and the jolliest roly poly baby you've ever seen.  I got to see him only for a few hours when I was in La Canada, before Rachel left to go back to Boston, but I did manage to get a few pictures in.

Me and my co-den-leader Andrea at our last official Cub Scout event, the Pinewood Derby!

Another one of my beautiful nephew, being held by my brother in the gorgeous window light of my old bedroom.  Rachel's kids have the longest eyelashes!

 And, the Pinewood Derby!  Here is Mosey videoing one of his races with his new camera.  He came directly from cello lessons, putting his shirt on in the car, and is looking just a little disheveled.  :-)

And here he is with his car!  This is the first pinewood derby we've made it through with NO TEARS from any of my boys.  Possibly because I only had one boy in it this year.  :-)  And there was just a little bit of drama in getting the car made. The day before the race he suddenly decided he didn't want to be in the race and refused to work on the car or explain himself.  After some cajoling from Ben, he figured out that the design Mosey originally had in mind he decided he didn't like, but couldn't figure out how to alter the design to one that he liked.  Anyway, Ben talked it out with Mosey and they decided to make a lego spaceship car. It turned out great!  Of course, the legos broke apart after EVERY single race, necessitating Mosey to put it back together about 20 times over the course of the evening, but he was OK with that.  It was worth it for the cool car!  This year I delegated the wheel-polishing to Ben.  I just couldn't do it with seminary the next day.  And we didn't have the full wheel-polishing kit.  I thought we did, but it turned out we only had 4 of the 7 grades of sandpaper, and Ben is not the attention-to-detail kind of person that I am (or maybe he is just not so foolish as to spend ridiculous amounts of time polishing wheels).  Anyway, Mosey's car ended up almost exactly in the middle of the pack, and he was fine with it.  Thank goodness.  Only one more year for the pinewood derby!  :-)

Another one of Joseph writing love notes to Sandy on our driveway.  :-)

A close-up of Mosey's awesome car.  We would have glued the lego pieces down, except these are all highly-coveted pieces in our lego set!

The judges at work.

All the boys excitedly determining the results of one of the test-runs down the ramp.

 And finally, my beautiful niece Rosalia in the tub at my mom's house.  She was rather attached to her binkie, but I did manage to get her to take it out for one *very* brief shot.  Rachel tells me when they got home she took it away cold-turkey, and she's doing OK!

 With the binkie.  Doesn't she have the most amazing eyes?  She can thank her daddy for that one.

And my missionary brother.  My mom wanted me to take missionary portraits of him while I was there, but we didn't think about it until the night before I had to leave for my 6 AM flight back to Texas.  I attempted some in the living room with lamp-lighting and my ISO up around 2000, but really they were not acceptable. He needs to get some professional ones done before his missionary-newness wears off!  But here's one, anyway.  I had to make it black and white because I just couldn't correct the wonky colors from the different lights we had going on in that room.