i heart faces: week 13 – Dramatic Black and White

I am so late in getting my entry up this week especially since there are already over 1000 entries!! Absolutely amazing!!

I had a hard time choosing which one I wanted to use; but in the end the following won out: 1. because I like that I was lower on the ground taking the photo and the composition turned out pretty sweet, 2. the lighting was perfect!, 3. I love the DOF, and 4. that baby couldn’t get any cuter if he tried.

To see more “Dramatic Black and White” photos, head on over to i heart faces!

i heart faces: week 12 - “Focusing on Angles”

Last week I had the most fun photo session with a group of high school girl friends. The girls were stunning and energetic and amongst stepping through plenty of cow “presents”, finding a big dead cat, and freezing our tooshies off – we still managed to have an amazing time and shared a lot of laughs.

I chose the following photo not only because of the tilt of the camera but because of all of the angles from the truck as well.

To see more photos utilizing various angles, head on over to i heart faces.

Meet Marvin

I am a little behind on posting. One because the weather has been horrible and we haven’t really done too much and two the boys have been sick….constantly. In fact, since it is spring break this week, we were supposed to head to the city to spend the night in Bricktown and then head to Norman the next day to see the science museum; but because Beau was running a high temp and plagued with strep; Josh, Beau and I got to stay home while only Jack got to go with his grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins. Maybe we’ll try a repeat of the trip this summer. Hopefully by that point-in-time my kids will be well…I’ll keep my fingers crossed but I won’t hold my breath.

Anywho, a couple of weeks ago, the hubby and Jack headed to Colorado to help Josh’s aunt and uncle move to Oklahoma. It happened to be the same weekend Jack got to bring the class pet, Marvin the Monkey, home.

Here are Marvin’s diary entries for their weekend together:

Friday, Feb. 6, 2010 - Today, I got to leave school early with Jack Brookshire. We headed to Jack’s house where we quickly loaded up his daddy’s truck so that we could begin our journey to Colorado in order to help his Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Bill move from Trinidad to Hinton. The trip was long but Jack took good care of me. We watched movies on his DVD player, ate lots of junk food and even took a nap. We reached our destination around 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 7, 2010 - Today we all woke up early so that we could get a head start on loading up all the trucks and moving van with furniture, clothes, toys and dishes. Our plan was to leave Colorado around noon but we got held up a little when Jack and I had to make a visit to the Trinidad Emergency Room. While Jack was playing with his cousin Devin, Jack accidentally fell on his arm and everyone was scared he might have broken it. After having x-rays done, we discovered Jack had only sprained his arm. It was a huge relief and we finally got on the road to Oklahoma around 6:00. This time instead of riding in Jack’s daddy’s truck, we got to ride in the big U-Haul moving van with Uncle Bill. We finally got into Oklahoma around 4:30 in the morning and boy were we tired. Since it was so late, Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Bill got to have a sleepover at Jack’s house.

Sunday, Feb. 8, 2010 - Luckily, we all got to sleep in this morning because boy were we tired!. But then it was back to work. Everything we loaded onto the trucks and van yesterday, we had to unload into Uncle Bill and Aunt Jeannie’s new house. Then tonight, we got to go to Jack’s cousin Owen’s house for his third birthday party. It was a Dinosaur party and we ate hotdogs and cake and then played pin the tail on the dinosaur and watched Owen open his gifts. It was so much fun!

 

i heart faces: Week 10 - “Jump For Joy”

This week’s theme over at i heart faces is “Jump For Joy.” ‘

To see more jumping photos, head on over to i heart faces.

My soap box: keeping them innocent

So, I have been reading a lot lately and I have a few things I want to get off my chest.

First of all, before I get into my little tirade, let me start by saying I am whole heartedly for the first amendment. I am a huge advocate of freedom of speech and press. Furthermore, I do not believe in the banning or burning of books. Government should not play that kind of censorship roll in our community.

However, I do think it is our responsibility as parents to censor what our children read; but, how do we do this without discouraging our children from reading all together?

Most of the books I have been reading lately have been young adult fiction. I choose to read these because they are entertaining, usually well-written, and they don’t include a lot of the “sexier” scenes that adult fiction usually has. I’m not a prude, I just don’t like to blush while reading a novel : )

The thing is, the more I read young adult fiction, the more I realize how much the times have changed. Maybe I was ignorant and naive during my adolescent years, but I honestly don’t remember adult language and sexual content being embedded within the books I read.

I realize that kids are going to hear bad words at school and hear about who is sleeping with whom; but shouldn’t we try to protect their innocence for as long as we can? To me there is no need for our children to be bombarded with these sorts of things 24/7; but I am at a loss for how to do this without discouraging my children from reading.

What are your thoughts on this? If you have young adults, how do you go about “censoring” (for lack of a better word) what they read or do you at all? With a five-year-old and a two-year-old, I am obviously not to this hurdle quite yet, but I would love some ideas for future reference.

i heart faces: Fix-It Friday #45

What a fun photo for this week’s challenge – I absolutely love the perspective!!

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

To see more Fix-It Fridays, head on over to i heart faces.

The ceaseless chaos

And I don’t just mean the weather.

The phrase “ceaseless chaos” about sums up my life in general over the past few weeks.

You’ve read about my hairy, or rather hairless, situation with Beau and how Jack instigated the whole thing;  but I haven’t subjected you to all of the other “happenings” in a house with two boys….until now.

For some reason, Jack seems to play the lead roll in most of the stories around here; which is weird, because I like to think of him as my mellow child. However, incident after incident has occurred with him as of recently. Maybe it’s because he is five. Maybe it’s because he is a boy. Or maybe it is because I have no idea what I am doing as a mother. Any of those reasons are highly plausible.

It all started a few weeks ago when I went to pick Jack up from school. His teacher informed me he had been sent to the principle’s office for…get this…. peeing in the bathroom. Not in a urinal or a toilette, mind you, but rather in the actual bathroom floor. I got him to the car and immediately started crying. In all my years of school, NEVER was I EVER sent to the principle’s office (yes, I was somewhat of a goodie-goodie). So how I was to handle my son’s being sent in for discipline in only his first year of school was beyond me.

We talked about it for a long while with him insisting over and over again that he didn’t know why he did it, only that he “just did.” Until finally, after 20 minutes of my crying episode and trying to get to the bottom of such out-of-character behavior on his part did he finally say, “But mom, there’s a drain in the bathroom, don’t-cha know?”

Leave it to the plumber’s kid to think it is okay to pee in the drain on the bathroom floor. I called the school to make sure we were not having a lying problem as well. With a laugh, the teacher and the principle both assured me that he had peed near the drain and that come-to-think of it, he probably was not the first…just the first to be caught.

Next on the list, was a purple play-doh issue. Jack woke up screaming one night about his ear hurting and with as many problems as we’ve endured with Beau’s ears, I assumed that it was an ear infection. The next morning I took Jack to the doctor who discovered he had shoved a whole bunch of purple play-doh in his ear. It had hardened and had to be scraped and flushed out.

Then came the hair issue.

Then Monday Jack was sent to the principle’s office again. This time for acting up while the teacher was gone. The principle assured us that it wasn’t a big deal. He is a good and smart boy whom teacher’s expect a lot out of and when he acted up on Monday, along with everyone else, he was the one that got reprimanded….at least that is what the principle said.

Today, I received yet another call from the school. This time to inform me that Jack was sick. They asked me to come and pick him up and bring clothes when I did. (Baloney, you will totally love this story! for the rest of you it is probably TMI – but, that’s how I roll these days).

When I got to the school, I was directed to the nearest boys bathroom, which coincidentally had a “Bathroom Closed” sign handing on the door; and upon entering, there was Jack sitting naked from the waist down on a stool loaded down with paper towels and baby wipes. To be honest, it was one of the funniest and saddest things I had ever seen. Had I had my phone with me, I totally would have taken a picture.

Apparently a major case of diarrhea had gotten the better of Jack along with all of his clothes and shoes.

Like I said….ceaseless chaos!! Maybe by finally getting this all out in the open, life around here will calm down….I’m not holding my breath though.

i heart faces – week 8: Hands On Fun

Wow! What a challenging  theme for this week’s i heart faces - instead of focusing on the face, they have chosen a theme that focuses on the hands. Of course I wanted to not miss out but coming up with a photo proved to be rather difficult. I really wanted the hands to tell a story and to show some kind of relationship. I am hoping that the photo didn’t have to just have hands, because here is what I came up with:

To see more hands-y photos, head on over to i heart faces.