Keeping it Real : Fall Photo Shoot Slideshow

When I say we take a lot of pictures, that is a massive understatement.  We snap pictures of the girls constantly.  When we get an idea in our heads of how a picture should look, we go completely overboard on the number of pictures we take trying to get that elusive "perfect" shot.  Case in point, what is becoming our yearly picture of the girls on the decorative wagon we put out during the fall.  Last year it took seven pictures to get an acceptable pose out of Melanie and Claire, the third one being our favorite shot.  Granted, we've added another child the the mix since then.  Another kiddo to keep looking at the camera in a quasi-happy sort of way does make things a bit more complicated, but it shouldn't be 80+ pictures over a two day time span complicated.  We just tend to do that to ourselves I guess. Someday I'll get my OCD issues addressed.  Until then, I'm sure there will be more events like these happening at our house. 

The real kicker?  We ended up liking the sixth picture in the series the best :/  *Sigh*  Someday we'll stop doing this to ourselves our kids. 

(In our defense, it was pretty chilly and a heavily breezy the first day, opting to try again the next day after church)

This is how you end up with 5000+ pictures in a year.  I am SO thankful for digital cameras, otherwise we'd have to choose between sending our kids to college and having cute pictures of them, and I wouldn't completely trust myself to choose college savings over film developing if it came down to it.  After all, I am the same person that would use entire rolls of film on posing pictures of her stuffed bears as a "tourist family on vacation" as a child, thanks to my godfather giving me a camera for my 8th birthday.  Bless my parents for footing my film developing bill!

Fall Round-Up

 To get us all caught up, here's an overview of what we've been up to this fall, post Halloween, in mostly chronological order.

 Amelia survived her first Kansas earthquake

(the rest of us did too, for that matter)
She smiled through the whole thing!

 LOTS of coloring has been going on.  Claire would periodically put the writing end of the markers in her mouth when contemplating her masterpieces.  Oops!

 Melanie continues to enjoy preschool.  Here she's modeling a headdress she made at school when learning about Thanksgiving and the "disguise" she got from school for Halloween.

 The girls did a really good job of picking up their toys they had strewn about the basement (without whining or complaining!  Will wonders never cease?!?!) so we took them on a special trip to the playground at SEAS.

 Amelia started walking at 9 1/2 months old, shortly before Thanksgiving. 

We spent a day at Matt's parents' ranch and Amelia went on her first Gator ride.  It obviously wasn't too thrilling for her ;P

 All three girls with Gramps and Grams down by the creek at the ranch

 Claire with godmother Aunt Katie

When we got back from  walking along the creek we spotted and armadillo, so we got to go on our first  armadillo chase to make sure it didn't try to burrow under the deck.  Icky looking things!  We also got to watch more than half a dozen deer come up close to the house in a field towards dusk, all from the comfort of the kitchen.  All sorts of  things to do and see out at the ranch!

 

Between October 30th and December 18th we celebrated five birthdays with our families, so there were lots of cards to be painted by our girls.

The girls really seem to enjoy it, and it saves me a trip to the store to attempt to pick out the perfect, meaningful card quickly enough to keep the girls from getting antsy and driving me berserk, so I'd say it's a win/win solution.  Hopefully the recipients enjoy the cards as much as the girls like making them.

 Aunt Katie's birthday dessert of choice -two kinds of chocolate fondue and lots of dip-ables!

 I think it's safe to say the girls liked it.

(Sugar coma much?)

 A lot.

 Claire has become quite the puzzle master recently.  We have a couple 100 piece puzzles that she regularly does all by herself, in addition to several 25-50 piece puzzles.  It took a few times doing it with Melanie to really get her going, but now she easily finishes them on her own. 

Being assigned to take the veggie tray to a holiday gather can be kinda boring.  Thanks to pinterest.com though I came across some creative veggie tray presentations. The girls had fun helping me arrange the turkey tray (the tomatoes kept rolling off though, so the turkey's "feathers" aren't quite right).  They were quite pleased with the results.  Claire didn't want to be in the picture though.

 Amelia, with Grandma, on her first Thanksgiving

 Looks like a bit too much love in Amelia's opinion.

 Poor Amelia can't really move her arms when she's wearing her coat in her car seat.  It sure is funny to look at though!

 My Grandma McHugh celebrated her 92nd birthday the weekend after Thanksgiving.

 Melanie has taken to designing her own cards.  When she heard me telling Matt that we would be having carrot cake because it was my grandma's favorite Melanie must have been listening.  Her card design was flowers and a cupcake with carrots on top!  I thought it was pretty cute :)  Her most recent card design was for her Uncle John and included a pretzel (he has taken to making soft pretzels to go with his home brewed beers), a basketball and a Jayhawk (for his love of KU).  I'm really enjoying seeing her creativity blossom!

 Melanie really wanted to help Matt bring the Christmas tree upstairs on the first Sunday of Advent. 

 He let her carry the top most section upstairs, and she was determined to do it all by herself.

 This was also the fist year we really let the girls help decorate the tree.  They really seemed to enjoy it.

 Matt even got in on the decorating.  In the past I've only been able to get him to put the star on top of the tree since I'm too short.  Another perk of letting the girls help ;)

 Claire is diaper free!  Not as free as in this picture, she now wears underwear, but when we're actively potty training it has worked well for us to have the girls go without anything between them and their clothes when we're at home.  It somehow seems to increase their accountability for getting to the toilet on time when nature calls.  The main challenge we have now is keeping her pants up since she doesn't have the extra bulk of a diaper to help fill things out for her!

 Our house all lit up.

 One of our neighbors suggested everyone at the end of our court line their driveway with the large clear Christmas lights.  It looked really sharp, and a few people that he didn't talk to about it went ahead and followed suit since it looked so nice!

I was commissioned to do a 1st birthday cake for a little boy who comes from a family of San Francisco Giants fans.  It was kinda fun getting to do a boy themed cake, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

 Amelia on her first carousel ride

 Bombardier had their yearly Christmas party for the employees where they bring carnival rides and games and have them set up in a few of the hangars for the employees and their families to enjoy.  Our girls are still too short for most of the rides.  We still stood in line at a few different rides only to get to the front of the line and have the girls decide they didn't want to go for some reason or another.(I think they were a bit overwhelmed by the number of people and how much bigger they other kids were, but that's just motherly speculation).  Despite all this they still had fun. They especially enjoyed the carousel and getting balloon animals from Troubles the Clown.

 We had the privilege of watching one of our goddaughters during the day while her mom was out of town on business so her dad could still go to work.  The girls had a blast together, and it was pretty amusing for me to watch what they'd come up with to keep themselves occupied!

 After getting the girls' pictures taken in their Christmas dresses we did our first "random act of artwork" drop off on Grams' car at her work.  Trying to come up with more ways to disperse the girls many "masterpieces", and hopefully a few smiles along the way, in the same vein as this post.  The girls thought this was really fun, so I'm sure we'll do it again.

 Melanie finished up another round of tap/ballet classes through our local park board.

 Amelia with Great Grandma and Great Grandpa 

Such a good picture of all of them!

So there you have it.  Pretty random.  A bit of everything, scattered here and there.  Now you know what we've been up to while I've been on a blogging hiatus!