1.31.10 - one month!

well, my little cardinal friend came back! this time, since i literally had ALL DAY, i sat by my door and inched it open in order to get a picture without the glass between us. he flew away once, but came back quickly. he's a hungry fella! and i think he has a wife. i'll get her picture on here sometime later. on another note, i have now officially taken one picture a day for an entire month! i think i'm hooked. :)

1.30.10 - taking flight

1.29.10 - playdough

this morning, while we eagerly awaited the snow, i pulled out the fresh, new play dough and all three of my kiddos - including my sick toddler with a fever of 101 - happily played for two straight hours!! it was great and even i joined in on the fun. :) i counted it as half a day of school since i have alphabet cookie cutters and i had the girls spell words and my toddler picked out all the letters he new and made "cookies" from them. :)

1.28.10 - flour?

so evidently the new thing is to go out and stock up on as much flour as possible before a "big snowstorm"! the bread and milk sections were amazingly full. so are people making their own bread these days? or just figuring they'll make 5 dozen cookies to get them through the next 48 hours?? gotta love this state...! :}

1.27.10 - story time

after doing his own "school work", he had a 2010 version of story time ...a story read aloud on my itouch (don't worry, i do read books out loud to him all the time too.). :) it's about a little girl who uses her imagination to be all kinds of fun things...one is a slug that falls off a leaf (cuter than it sounds...)...and that part cracks him up and he runs to show it to me every time. :)

1.26.10 - :)

guess what we're going to do tomorrow?

1.25.10 - bookworm

the stack of books i am working my way through at the moment. my itouch is on top because i have the Kindle application on it with two more books i'm working on.

1.24.10 - smoky

this is why it's called the smoky mountains. i love it here. :) (not that i'm exactly in the smoky mountains...but close enough...)

1.23.10 - crazy

if you haven't read this book...you should.

1.22.10 - one

aiden turned one on thursday! his party was last night and he definitely enjoyed his little cake that leah, of course, made. here he is checking to see if the board the cake was on might be edible too... :} happy birthday aiden!! :)

1.21.10 - answers

i don't know if you can tell as well in the picture as i could in person, but this was from one of our spelling worksheets this week and one of my girls asked why some of the circles were colored in pink and some were white. i took a look...and somehow the answers were filled in pink! although, i didn't tell her that...just told her to ignore it. i knew she would get them correct anyways, even if she figured out what was going on... :)

1.20.10 - pretty paper

i love scrapbook paper! so many happy colors and designs! :) infinite page possibilities! until i get stumped on a page and have to quit until tomorrow.... :}

1.19.10 - still

still little. still gets worn out (today he went to preschool for the second time...sniff sniff...and missed his regular naptime and crashed on the couch when he got home). still my baby. :)

1.18.10 - happy face

her sister was cracking her up.

oh. and that is not a christmas tree in the background. it's a valentine's day tree now.

1.17.10 - leap year

snapshot of a scene of ireland in the movie leap year. cute movie.

1.16.10 - birds

i have tried pics like this before. but even though my sliding glass doors are tinted, this cardinal always seems to know when i'm slowly moving toward the door to try to sneak a pic! today he was distracted enough for me to grab a quick photo, although it would be clearer if i could have opened the door a crack...haha...yeah, that'll never happen! :)

1.15.10 - woody

yay!! i have always wanted (ok, for at least a few years...) to take an eyelash picture like this one but could never quite get them to look right. this one is much better than other one's i have attempted. :) happy birthday, baby!! :)

1.14.10 - yummy lunch

i'll write a "real" post on the other blog about this lunch later. :)

1.13.10 - kale chips

yet another food idea from leah! she has tons of them...this one just got me inspired, so i tried it. kale chips are waaay simple, easy, healthy, and yummy! all i did was break up kale leaves on a cookie sheet. sprayed them with pam (i used the olive oil kind...cuz i had it on hand), sprinkled them very lightly with salt and also a chilli, garlic, & pepper seasoning that i had. stuck them in the oven on 375 for 10 minutes...and voila! a krispi, healthy snack with a burst of flavor from the spices! i also tried this with spinach leaves last night (for 7 min., not 10) and it worked also...but they are wafer thin and i needed a 5lb bag of them! ha! my oldest tried them at lunch and said, "wow, kiki! i could eat these for two weeks!!" :)

1.12.10 - peek a boo!

Spent the afternoon at Leah's house today. Aiden looves to play peek-a-boo with his bedroom door! :)

1.11.10 - relaxin' in the tub

not the clearest picture since he wasn't still but for a second at a time and i had all three kiddos in the tub and hadn't thought to bring my camera upstairs with us. :) (took this with my cell phone) these are my baby's feet. he was loving laying back in the tub and resting his feet on the edge today. :)

1.10.10 - fire

today had to have two pictures so you could better tell what was going on. the workshop of one of my parents' neighbors caught on fire this afternoon. (it is connected by a breezeway to the house behind the trees in the right of the picture...not the one with the fence on the left) other neighbors say they heard a big explosion. the couple that lives there makes wooden porch swings and the light colored mound you can see in this picture just above is the sawdust pile, we assume. mom and i walked out and heard sirens and mom mentioned that they sounded close by. i figured they were on the main road right down the street...until i turned around and saw the huge billow of smoke and realized they were headed towards us! the smell of the burning building brought back memories of when the main building at my college burned down my freshman year. that smell stayed on campus for MONTHS afterwards.

anyways, long post for tonight. :) praying that no one was hurt in this fire. hopefully i'll hear more about it soon.

1.9.10 - words, not numbers!!

ok, so not every one of these pics is going to be just gorgeous...but this is what was on my mind this evening. after waiting for half an hour for a pot of water to boil...i had to once again remember what the heck to set my stove dial on! :-p to me, "lo" would be 2-4 and "high" would be 10-12...does that not make sense to you?? i do way more steaming in the microwave than i do boiling on the stove, so i never remember whether to follow the words...or the numbers! now that i've done a post on it, maybe i'll remember...words!! not numbers!

1.8.10 - baby aiden

tonight i got to go to the home of my new friends, jing and ye for authentic chinese dumplings. yum!! leah was there with aiden, and jing got in some baby practice. :)

my kids still refer to aiden as "baby aiden", although he is almost a year old now...

1.7.10 - snow!

ok, so you might have picked a different picture for my pic of the day, but i just couldn't decide which one to choose! and i love this one because it shows his whole outfit - lion mittens, crazy hat and all! :)

1.6.10 - bathtime

got to snuggle with maddox for a while tonight and help give him his bath. he likes the bath...not so much the being cold and naked while getting dried off and dressed! :)

1.5.10 - girls' night out

dinner and a movie with three other girl friends. FREEZING cold outside!! peppermint hot chocolate to warm up. second time in my life to try fake nails...last time they lasted about ten minutes...tonight at least they lasted all evening...bleck! taking them off NOW! :}

(**rebekah, did you know you can ask to add peppermint to a signature hot chocolate?? YUUUM!!) :)

1.4.10 - painting with water

velvet paint art. gotta love the $ section of target!! :)

1.3.10 - my happy place

our starbucks. corner table. peppermint mocha latte/earl gray tea latte. blueberry muffin/something else. :) bf. happy place.

1.2.10 - abxie rose

got to spend time tonight with my "other" family, celebrating Christmas all over again. this is abby, who i have known since she was in her momma's belly! ;)

love her.

1.1.10 - pj party

fuzzy, comfy, soft pj pants i wore last night to leah's new year's eve party. yummy food, fun games, good friends...great evening welcoming the new year! :)

goal.

i don't like new year's resolutions. they seem to be made to be broken. so this is just a goal...one picture every day...all year long. maybe a sentence or two to describe the picture...mostly so i remember what was going on. we'll see how it goes! :) ready for the first one? here we go...!