Joy of Love: Day 27

What they say

Meet Mario.  I know, you thought this was my Tiger, but you are mistaken.  For the last three day he has been Mario and insists on being referred to as such.  Other family members are as follows:

Me = Princess Peach

Sparky = Luigi

KK = Daisy

Doug = Bowser

Doug even made this boy star bit shaped pancakes for lunch today.  Perhaps it is time for the kid to lay off of the Wii?  AKA:  We really need it to be spring so that I can throw the kids outside once again.

Joy of Love: Day 25

When you love them the most

The first thing I thought of when I saw this assignment topic was the fact that Doug cleans the kitchen every night after dinner (when he is home) because he knows how much I despise doing that after I just spent all that time making dinner.  Since I refuse to take a picture of my horrible kitchen, I realized that I needed to find something else.  That brings us to this picture.  I really wish that I had a before shot of this room.  This is the room that my boys share.  For the last two weeks it has been completely covered with toys/clothes/trash/junk, except for some cleared pathways to the beds.  98% of the mess was done by the littlest boy, who seems to be allergic to clean rooms, which is why the room was never clean.  The thought of cleaning this room was completely overwhelming to me.  Yesterday as I was tackling my other overwhelming task (the dreaded laundry), Doug very sweetly took the boys into this room and the three of them cleaned everything up.  That was love.  Then this room proceeded to stay this clean for about 2 hours.  Really, a miracle that it lasted that long.

Joy of Love: Day 22

Portrait

The kids were home today for an unexpected snow day and so I decided that this little love of mine would be my model for the day.  She is my Woo.  She will be 8 in one month.  She has asthma and a horrible cough that goes with it.  She is clever.  She is creative.  I love her.

Things that need to be resolved

1.  My ginormous mountain of clean laundry.

2.  My ever-increasing mountain of dirty laundry.

3.  The toy/clothes/random paper covered bedrooms.

4.  The mountain of recycling (because we are too cheap to pay for pick-up and so it collects and collects until we can no longer fit anything into our garage because we need to just load it into the car and take it to the recycling dumpsters at the Fire Station).

5.  My grody bathroom (because I have to share it with three children, two of which are boys).

6.  My dirt ridden floors that can't seem to stay clean because it won't stop snowing and so everyone tracks all of that slushy nastiness into the house.

7.  The wart on my chin.  It's not pretty or pleasant.  If you see me walking around with duct tape on my face, try not to point and laugh.

Joy of Love: Day 20

When They're Home

These are my boys.  They have a shared love/passion for the Wii/computer/video games.  They probably think that I am the meanest mom on earth because I limit their time on these beloved devices.  Nevertheless, when the kids get home from school, this is all Tiger wants to do.  Basically, Tiger sits and watches Sparky play and beat levels that he only dreams about.  He sits on the edge of the couch tense with anticipation and bursting with excitement over the moves on the screen in front of him.  Sparky, on the other hand, sits nonchalantly, absentmindedly chewing on his lip and he beats the levels with ease.

He's so glad when Daddy comes home

I just wish it lasted longer than 2 minutes.  My hope is that one day he will figure out that Daddy is the fun one, not me.  Then maybe one day he will prefer Daddy over myself.  I would particularly like him to prefer Daddy in the middle of the night.

Precious

She's not mine, but I often pretend that she is.  They don't come much sweeter than this little charmer (even if she refused to stay still for two seconds so that I could get a decent picture that was in focus).  Until we meet again little lady.

Tiger Talk

As we were driving to school the other day:  This is a scary song Mom.  Hurry, close your eyes.
____________________________________________________________

"I was not happy to go to sleep when I was sleeping.  I don't like sleeping, or sharing."

Joy of Love: Day 15

Kiss

I think he loves mommy the best!

Joy of Love: Day 13

Routines

Two of my loves.  Since we only live three houses away from the bus stop, I let them stand at the door and wait for the bus when it is so very cold outside.   And, since this winter has been so very cold, I get to see them standing at this door every morning. 

Joy of Love: Day 12

The Eyes

The always willing photography participant

The reluctant and slightly annoyed photography participant

Joy of Love: Day 11

Dreams

Right now the biggest dream of my love (and myself) is to move to a bigger house (and also to be debt free, but that is much harder to photograph).  Since I didn't really feel comfortable driving around and taking pictures of random peoples houses, I thought I would look to the dream of a smaller love.  My girl.  My girl dreams of water, and swimming, and being a mermaid.  She was born to be in the water.

What's in a name?

I have been thinking about this for awhile now and I am wondering if it is too late to start using a different name?  I am tired of introducing myself to people and having them think that my name is Betsy Moore.  Seriously.  Who knows how many people out in this world really think that my name is Betsy.  Maybe I should just start going by Betsy from now on.  No?  Well, there are so many possible name choices that can come out of the name Elizabeth and any of them would work better than Beth.  Hmmm, from now on perhaps I will be Bethany, or Liz, or Eliza, or Ellie?   Or I could scrap Elizabeth altogether and choose, um, perhaps Penelope?  See, so many choices.

Joy of Love Day 9 (Again)

Hobbies and Passions

The Wii.  It drives me crazy, but the boys love it.  I mean LOVE it.  It is the first thing this boy wants to do in the morning and he begs for it all day long.  Sadly for him, I am very stingy with Wii time.  Happy for me, a little extra Wii time is an excellent form of motivation for this little love.

Joy of Love: Day 9

Passions and Hobbies

Today the one I love is myself because the little love I was trying to photograph wasn't working with me.  Perhaps tomorrow he will work with me.  In the meantime, back to me.  Frankly, I have too many hobbies and it was really, really hard to decide which one to photograph.  Here is just one of them.  I love to read.  I go through spurts where I read all the time and the children get ignored and nothing gets done and then spurts where I don't pick up a book for months and months.  After a bit of a reading famine, reading has been this winter's coping mechanism for myself.  There is nothing better than getting completely lost in what I am reading.  As I tell my kids, it's like a movie in my head. 

Joy of Love: Day 8

Gift from the Heart

For those of you who are around me on a regular basis, you know that winter and I do not get along.  I don't like it.  It depresses me and I want to spend months holed up in my bed.  So let me take you back a year to a dark, cold, dreary February day.  It was a Saturday, there was a good foot or so of snow on the ground, and I had to go to a Baby Shower.  Normally lots of fun, but this was coming at the end of a very bad week and going out was the last thing I wanted to do.  It was weird because I was totally stalling my exit and for some reason Doug was practically pushing me out the door to the Shower.  So what else could I do?  I reluctantly left.  I survived the Shower and came home to my cute family outside shoveling the driveway and playing in the snow.  They were cute and I was happy to be home.  I went upstairs to change my clothes, totally prepared to climb back into bed and spend the rest of the day reading, when Doug called me to come downstairs.  Doug and the kids were all standing around the table grinning really big and acting rather strange and then they all burst out "Surprise" as they uncovered a box with this camera in it.  It took a second for me to register what I was seeing, but as soon as I figured it out I burst into tears.  After I had left for the shower they all piled into the car and headed to the store to buy this present for me.  It was seriously the best surprise Doug has ever given me.  I have wanted a DSLR camera for many, many years now but I just assumed it would be many, many more years before I could actually get one because they are so expensive and money is always so tight and I was fine with that.  Well, it turns out that Doug had spent that previous year tucking money away in a secret account so that he could buy me a camera.  That was true love and proof that he can still surprise me after all of these years.

Joy of Love Day 6: Who THEY love

This is my Woo and her beloved Blossom.  Without Blossom, this girl would surely have bad dreams. 

P.S.  I think that I am destined to never be on time for any of these assignments.

The old man turned 60!

This past weekend my dad had a pretty big birthday and so we decided to throw him a big old party.  The theme:  All things Mexican!

The Buffet Table

The centerpieces

The room

My love and my mother/not-so-silent financial backer

My cute sister/master of decor

My love and I

Me and the birthday boy

The birthday boy scoping out his cake

A quad of exhausted party executors

In an effort to rally my energy for clean-up I donned the sombrero

It was a fantanstic party and tons of fun was had by all.  A big thanks to my mom for making this come true, and to my sister for caring about decor and making sure everything looked great, and to Chad for forgoing sleep in order to get the video done, and to my love for putting up with me and for being the muscles behind the clean-up.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Day 5: Love to Hate (a day late)

Yesterday was CRAZY!! Still, I wanted to try to squeeze in the daily photography assignment, but I was having a hard time thinking of something that drove me crazy about my loved ones. In a moment of spontenaity I grabbed my camera as the kids went out to help their dad shovel the snow on the driveway and Voila! There it was. (I had also been messing around with my camera a bit during the day and so the settings were all off).

The shorts. . .365. . .with dress shoes (ok, really these are little leather boots). . .outside.

You can take the boy out of California, but you can't take California out of the boy. Really, I should just be glad he isn't wearing flip flops. Thankfully, his feet get too cold.

Realizations and Reaffirmations

I seriously dislike the mall.

I have completely lost the ability to shop for myself.

Adventures in Photography

I have once again been inspired, this time by my cute cousin Annie. She is doing this free online photography class hosted by Willette Designs and it looked like so much fun I decided to give it a try as well. Plus the sun came out and so I am feeling a little saucy. The assignments started on Feb. 1 and I am trying to catch up. Here is what I have so far:

Day 1: What they do

Day 4: What they wear

Still to come:
Day 2: How they look
Day 3: Then and Now

Gratitude

Dear Sun,
Thank you so much for making an appearance today.  Also, feel free to stick around for awhile.

Your fond admirer,
Beth

Bummer

This winter has not been good to my Woo.  She now has asthma and is becoming best friends with her inhaler.  Sigh. 

Tiger Talk

It was a long day stuck indoors due to an ice storm and by the end of the day the kids were a little loopy.  I was in the kitchen making dinner when Tiger came in and started to spin around and around in circles.  After making himself good and dizzy, he stopped.  As he tottered around a bit he planted his feet on the ground, stretched his arms out to the side and as he stood there trying to keep his balance he said, "Look Mom, I'm surfing", and that is exactly what it looked like.  His dad would be so proud.