12 Photos from 2014

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Amy

I’m really enjoying all the end-of-the-year posts I’m seeing around the internet right now. I’d like to join in with another one. Dwija from House Unseen (Life Unscripted) has a yearly link up with 12 photos from the year.

Photos? Yes please. Here we go.

January

One of my goals for 2014 (which I failed miserably on, I’ll write more about that later) was to get back to having fun with cooking and trying new recipes. The first effort toward this goal was the above pictured attempt to make gnocchi from scratch. It wasn’t my first attempt at gnocchi (with the first one, the potatoes never got cooked through, and I had to abort the plan entirely in order to throw together something my people could actually eat). This was a better recipe, but I didn’t realize that by allowing the girls to help, we would be over-kneading the dough and making it into an ugly mess. The gnocchi were more like dumplings. Fail.

Shortly after that photo was taken, we experienced Flumaggedon, a different type of ugly mess. Happily, we rounded out the month of January with a trip to Florida to visit my Grandma, to enjoy the warm weather, and to go to Disney World.

February

February was a bunch more sickness and freezing cold, with a skiing trip and a five-year-old’s Brave-themed birthday party thrown in the mix to keep it from being too awful. I even made cars out of cardboard boxes for the party.

Going through these photos and posts from last year is making me shudder for remembering all the sickness and COLD that kept us inside all winter long.

March

In March we began our first experience of observing Lent. I met the bishop, and we tried our parish’s fish fry (a lot). We were finally able to get outside, and the snow started to melt.

This girl ^^ turned two! (and I turned 38)

April

We spent a week with my parents, Damma and Tuppa as Sis calls them. We went through our first Holy Week. The big event was that I was received into full communion in the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil Mass.

^^ The water was really cold.

May

We planted a garden, celebrated six years of wedded bliss, and visited my parents again.

June

June was a full, full month. We went to the Farm, I ran a 5K for SMA, we visited family in Minnesota, and I started my Baby Catholic Answers All the Things series (which I have neglected terribly recently, sorry!).

July

We had friends over for dinner, went to a 4th of July parade, and had our annual trip to the Dirty Weird Zoo. Super Friend and I went to Edel. And we broke ground on our new home!

August

Okay, I’ll be honest. July and August basically sucked. I tried my hardest to make it not suck, and we did have lots of fun raspberry picking, eating ice cream, cooking out with friends, and going to the Iowa State Fair. I got stuff ready to start our homeschool year and for Miss to start her part-time kindergarten. And then the big day happened. My big girl started school! And my sweet middle child turned four.

September

Much better than July or August, September was full of homeschool field trips, soccer, hay rides, our first Michaelmas celebration, and of course, the Labor Day Party.

October

We decided to get some puppies, played in leaves, had fun with my parents, and went on more field trips. I made cupcakes for Miss’s school Halloween party, we trick-or-treated, and had lots of fun outside during the height of my favorite season.

Outdoor dance party ^^

November

Ah, November. November saw a sharp decline in my blogging (I only wrote five posts!!). Also in my everything-elsing. I went and got our sweet little puppies, and they have been sucking the life out of me ever since. They are good dogs, and I’m so happy we got them, but they aren’t quite house broken yet, so the hovering over them and taking them outside frequently has eaten into my time to do anything else. See? I can’t even remember what else we did in November!! Oh yeah, we went to the farm for deer hunting. We had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner with our friend-family (The Super Friends).

December

As usual, December was full of holiday fun and activities. I took the older girls to see The Nutcracker, we went to see Santa and met the Sugar Plum Fairy, and we’ve had lots of sicknesses, travels, and celebrating. We celebrated my husband’s birthday with our tradition of having the girls select gifts for him from the Dollar Tree. I promised to write about it, but then I got the stomach flu the day after his birthday. Here’s a precious shot of Sis giving love after he opened her gifts of a “bouncy ball,” a piggy bank, some scotch tape, and a pack of thumb tacks.

Lass selected a basket for collecting produce from our garden next year, a pack of pens, and a shower sponge. Miss’s gifts were a pair of scissors, a small mother-and-child figurine which she determined was Mary and Baby Jesus, and a pair of fuzzy orange (ladies) socks.

12 photos from 2014. I tried to select pics I haven’t posted before. It was fun to look back over the year in photos and posts. 2014 was a year of very high highs and very low lows. I’m looking forward to 2015.

Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for reading and particularly for sticking around through the past few months of minimal posting. I truly appreciate each of you. May you have many blessings in the new year!

Seven Quick Takes New Year’s Edition

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Amy

Linking up with Conversion Diary.

2013 was an interesting year here. We had some rough experiences. We had lots of changes, some good, some bad, some amazing. I think I will remember 2013 as a year of change and challenge.

I’m eagerly looking forward to 2014. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions as such, but I do like to think about the past year and the upcoming year. The good, the bad, what I want to modify, what I want to accomplish. I like to look forward to the new year and make goals. Here are a few of mine for 2014 (well, seven to be exact):

1. I haven’t completed any sort of race or other fitness event since running the Disney World Marathon six years ago. I am not sure which event I will do yet, but I will be training and getting back out there for some sort of race/event in 2014 (one thing I am sure of, it will not be a full marathon).

2. Currently, I can do two unassisted pull-ups (unassisted meaning without a resistance band), and eight straight-body (not on my knees) pushups, and I can back squat 135 pounds. By the end of the year my goal is to be able to do ten pull-ups, twenty pushups, and to back squat 185 pounds.

3. I read somewhere around 43 books in 2013. I really don’t need to make a goal to read more. Actually, I probably should make goals to read less and get more other things done in my free time. But that’s not going to happen.

With that in mind, here are some books on my “To-Read” list for 2014:

Catholicism for Dummies – I’m almost halfway through this one.

Divergent – I have a secret love of teen dystopian novels (Hunger Games, anyone?).

10 Gifts of Wisdom: What Every Child Must Know Before They Leave Home

Wool – My husband finished this audiobook recently. It sounds interesting, and when possible, I like reading the same things my husband has read/listened to so we can discuss. We’ve been talking about Screwtape Letters a lot recently, and I really enjoy our conversations (not that I expect this book to be on par with Screwtape, but maybe still fun to talk about)

The Sun Also Rises – This was on my Summer Reading List and I forgot about it. I’ll get to it this year.

Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It – You know how much I enjoy Jennifer Fulwiler’s blog. I’m giddy about her upcoming book.

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

He Leadeth Me – Another one from the summer list that I forgot to read.

Things Pondered – I just saw a link to a ton of free Kindle books by this author. This one in particular is interesting to me, but I nabbed all of the free ones and hope to read them all this year.

That’s just a start. I also intend to start reading my Bible more this year now that I’m almost finished with 150 Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know.

4. I will work on experimenting and using different settings of my camera. I almost always shoot in the “P” mode of my camera, which controls everything but the flash for me. I need to start learning how to shoot in the “A,” “S,” and “M” modes.

At least once a week I’ll be experimenting with different camera settings, lighting, etc. I have tried reading books. I’ve tried taking a class. I need to just do different things with my camera if I really want to learn.

5. I need to pick a Kindergarten curriculum (!!) I also really need to work on being more organized in my homeschool planning and scheduling. I haven’t yet found a system that I’m comfortable with. Suggestions would be welcome.

6. I’m instituting a Family Game Night. We had our first one tonight. I saw the game Cootie on Amazon the other day and remembered how much I loved playing it as a kid. I ordered it.

What was I thinking? It is not fun. But we have lots of other games too, and I think Super Friend has a bajilllion games for her kids, so I’ll ask her for some recommendations as well.

Unfortunately, I suspect my kids will be choosing Cootie as our game for a while.

7. I will be getting back into some cooking adventures. My husband and I used to have fun doing a little version of the Food Network show “Chopped” at home (I even have a whole category in the “Topics” drop-down dedicated to this). Then last year he got me some great books and I started some other fun cooking projects.

I cooked lots of egg recipes one week.

^^Homemade mayo

^^ Shirred eggs (yeah, I didn’t know what that was either) with cream and parmesan-reggiano

^^ Souffle !!

Another week I did Spanish dishes.

I like doing things to make food prep fun, but I’ve gotten away from doing this for a while and have been in a cooking rut (mini meatloaves, lettuce wrap tacos, chicken with mustard/maple sauce, repeat).

So. Back to fun stuff. My husband got me some gorgeous cookbooks for Christmas. Italian and French. I’m going to get closer to my roots and go Italian first. Then I think I’m going to go in depth with onions. Then French. Then, who knows? Sunday I’ll be making gnocchi in tomato butter sauce from scratch. Yum.

I love the feeling of beginning a new year. Reflecting and anticipating. 2014 is gonna to be good.

What are your goals for 2014?

See more quick takes here. Happy New Year!

The Little Photographer

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Amy

Quickie post tonight:

As foreshadowed yesterday, my girls got to get outside and play today.

And play they did.

They ran and ran around the yard, especially through the last patch of snow.

Lass fell and got snow on her hands. She did not like that one bit, and Daddy warmed them up for her.

They got beautifully wet and dirty and had fits when it was time to come in for lunch and naps. Hopefully we will have more of the same tomorrow.

Miss got a little camera today. She has been asking for one. She was so excited and get right to taking photos of everything.

Her sister.

Herself.

Her Yo Gabba Friends.

And various other artistic subjects.

This one was quite puzzling to us until we realized she had taken a picture of the cover of her Daddy’s “Whitetail” magazine.

I love this one. She took it while spinning around dancing.

I didn’t edit any of these photos other than to enhance the color on them a bit, as this kid’s camera doesn’t take the best quality photos. No cropping or otherwise changing the pics. I love them! What a wonderful way to see the world through her eyes. I’m so proud of my little photographer.

I Guess I’ll Just Teach Myself

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Amy

I have been wanting to take a photography class ever since I got my DSLR camera, about 2 years ago. It’s a wonderful camera, and my photos improved dramatically just by switching to it from my point and shoot. But I have pretty much been using it on the Auto setting for two years. I’ve learned a few tips here and there, and purchased some lens upgrades, but I really have wanted to take the next step to using the many settings my camera has to offer.

I grabbed a course book for the local community college a few weeks ago, determined to find a class to take before the baby arrives. I found one that looked really interesting, but the meeting times weren’t very good. I found another with a doable meeting time, but it wasn’t really what I was looking for. So, I have decided to try harder to teach myself. I have a camera manual, a good book my husband bought me for my birthday (almost two years ago), and lots of helpful online resources. No excuse not to gain some new knowledge and skills.

One thing I’ve been wanting to do is learn how to use the settings of the camera so I can get more light into my photos without using my pop-up flash, which I have tended to use a lot even though it gives a weird look to the photos. Unfortunately, around here this time of year it isn’t uncommon to have a serious lack of good natural light. Luckily, this morning I did have lots of light to get some good photos of the girls without using the flash.

But tonight I wanted to experiment a little bit in the relative dark of our family room. The overhead lights were turned off, so the only light in the room came from one floor lamp next to my chair and the light from surrounding rooms. My wonderful hubby was tolerant as I snapped his photo over and over. I had read a tip that, to let more light into a photo, I should set the aperture to the lowest (or highest? biggest? smallest? I don’t get the lingo yet, but whatever) setting. I put my camera on the aperture setting and turned it down (the number got smaller) and got this.

Then I went to the lowest number I could with the lens I was using (1.8) and got this.

I couldn’t believe how bright the photos were!

Of course, to get this much light in the photos, the shutter speed was slowed down quite a bit. To give a little bit of perspective, I then switched to the fully manual setting, kept the aperture on 1.8, and then sped the shutter speed way up. I got this.

A little slower shutter speed and I got this.

A little slower.

Then I slowed it waaayy down, and couldn’t get it in focus. Just the slight shake of my hand while the shutter was open for so long made it blurry.

A little faster.

Perfect.

Isn’t he handsome??

I think I’ll do more practicing with the camera on the aperture mode. I think this will be the easiest way to experiment and still get some good photos of my girls. That’s really why I take photos anyway.

Membership Has its Privileges

Posted on January 6, 2012January 11, 2023 by Amy

For months now, I have been saying that I want to rejoin the YMCA. My husband and I were members when we first moved here, because we lived in a rental house and didn’t have a good place to exercise at home. When we bought our current house, we set up a nice garage gym area and let our Y membership lapse. Miss was too tiny to do any activities there and we could exercise at home, so we let it go. BUT, now Miss is bigger. She’s old enough to start getting into some of the little classes they have at the Y and I really need to keep up with swimming lessons for both of the girls. There are so many good activities for families at the Y. Plus, there isn’t a whole lot else to do indoors in our town during the winter. So, this week I finally got myself in gear and went to the Y to renew our family membership. We started taking advantage of it yesterday by going to “Wiggles and Giggles.” Our Y has an indoor soccer field, and they open it up twice a week in the mornings for little ones to come and play. They pull out ride-on toys, balls, big mats, and various other things for the kids to enjoy. Not to mention there’s lots of room to run. The girls had a blast.

(Quick snack break)

I’m so glad we joined. The girls ran and danced and got to blow off some steam. And we met some other moms and kids there, so I got to visit with some grown ups.

And speaking of visiting with grown ups, my husband and I had a great date night last night. We went to a new sushi place, and it was pretty good. Of course the best part was just being able to hang out and chat with my hubby. Before dinner we went to Miss’s school and met with her teachers for our little parent-teacher conference.

It was great to hear all about what she has been doing in school and to see how thorough they are in their assessments of her. And it was pretty cool to hear someone else describe her spot-on and know how much time and attention she must get there for them to be able to really “get” her so well. I loved when they told me how much she likes to sing at the top of her lungs and to shake it when they dance.

No one needs to tell me how much my girls love to dance and that they’ve got some moves.

Miss got new ballet shoes yesterday. The ones I got her for her Halloween costume had cut into her little heels and one shoe had totally split on the side from being worn so much, so I told her she couldn’t wear those anymore. She was so upset and asked repeatedly for them for several days. When I pulled out the new shoes yesterday, I was relieved to find that she loves these just as much even though they’re a different style. She immediately asked, “Momma, can you play some music so I can ballet dance?” So I did. The Cure.

I got a question in a comment about organizing photos, related to my last post about taking at least one photo a day. Unfortunately, I’m not really great about organizing my photos. Mostly I just dump them into iPhoto. I do “flag” my favorites when I’m going through and editing them, which is how I select the pics I’m going to upload to a blog post or use for something else. Just in the past few days with the start of this new project I have begun putting photos into folders by month, so I will have a little bit better organization of them that way. I also have set a goal to start deleting photos a little bit more so I won’t have such an overwhelming mass of pictures. And few years ago I set a goal to make photo books for each of my girls for each year of their lives. Unfortunately, I’ve only completed Miss’s first year book. So making the rest of the books needs to become a priority, and I’m hoping to get my photos more organized that way too. I will make folders for each girl, each year in my iPhoto in addition to making the books. That’s it. I don’t have a great system yet. Anyone else have a good way of organizing digital photos?

The 365-Photo Project

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Amy

I like to read a blog called I Heart Faces. It’s a photography blog, and often they have very cool tips or ideas. One thing I read about on Sunday was the 365-Photo Project. The (fairly obvious from the title) “project” is to set a goal to take at least one photo every day for a year. I love this idea, and decided I am going to do it this year, and every year from now on. What a great way to document all the moments, big and small, of my girls’ lives.

So far, I’ve gotten some very fun photos. Sunday morning, Lass woke up really early. We got to spend a little time playing, just the two of us. And I got to kick off my new project with these super cute photos of her in her sister’s new play apron, “cooking.”

As a side note, Lass has recently started wanting to take her jammies or clothes off all the time. So, there may be a lot of pics in the near future of her in just a onesie. Or more likely, a onesie with some sort of dress up apparel over it.

Yesterday, I got this photo of the girls as they were playing and waiting for some friends to come over for a play date.

And today, my big girl was happy to ham it up for me when I asked her to show off her “Go Blue” shirt after school (big bowl game tonight, after all).

I love this face.

She really wanted a photo in this pose.

And of course, my other beautiful one, crazy hair and all (she pulled out her spout pony this morning).

Here’s to a year of great photos of my girls.

Christmas-ing

Posted on December 23, 2011December 31, 2013 by Amy

Oh, we are a-Christmas-ing at our house this week. Lots of carols and shopping and wrapping. We even did a bit of crafting, making ornaments out of bread. We started by using cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the bread.

Lass mostly just wanted to eat it.

After we got them cut out I used a straw to make holes in them for hanging and we left them to dry out/get stale over night.

Then we painted and glittered them (I mixed some glue into the paint). Yes, I hate glitter. But it is a necessary part of holiday crafting with little girls, in my opinion. So, we braved the glitter. Lass hasn’t done painting with a brush yet (unless you count her painting/eating endeavor with the pumpkins at Halloween), so I was just going to let her go to town with crayons and a piece of poster board.

But she saw Big Sister with the paint and was not about to settle for boring old crayons.

She did a great job. She did immediately try to put the brush in her mouth, but refrained when I told her no. Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t long before she got tired of painting and wanted to get down.

This girl, on the other hand, was all about focus. She painted and glittered ornaments for her babysitters, her two teachers, and her Daddy, carefully choosing the shape, paint color, glitter color, and hanging ribbon color for each recipient.

There are only a few left that haven’t yet been given out or put on our tree. I think they turned out pretty cute, though I’m not sure how well they’ll hold up. The one Miss gave to her Daddy is already in the trash after Lass tried to eat it and broke off the top of the ornament where the string hole was cut. They are made from bread, after all…

Today was Miss’s holiday party at her school. She got to play a game where she tossed a big jingle bell into a bucket to win a present. This is her shy smile after achieving her objective.

She decorated cookies to set out for Santa.

And she filled a bag with reindeer food (which looked like a mixture of oatmeal, glitter, and maybe some flour, with a few jingle bells and cinnamon sticks thrown in). We will be taking this to the Farm tomorrow night.

The girls had lots of fun playing with the Christmas tree tonight. You might have noticed that Lass has a new hairdo by the way.

The barrette just wasn’t always working that well, even when she did keep it in her hair.

So we’re all about the spouting pony look these days. It works much better and is so stinking cute. You wouldn’t believe the number of comments this thing gets when we go out in public.

I did a little experimenting with my fun new-ish camera lens to try to achieve a new photography effect I have recently learned about. It’s called “bokeh” and is basically “the aesthetic quality of the blur,” or something like that. Look at how the Christmas lights are twinkly and out of focus behind the girls. That’s what I was going for.

I love Holiday bokeh!

Miss has been in one or the other of her two tights/leotard combinations since we got back from Kentucky for almost every moment of the day. It is like pulling teeth to get her to put clothes on to go to the store or to school. She had on that adorable Matilda Jane top at her school party today, and asked to change back into this as soon as we arrived home. She got back on the ballerina kick when my Auntie got her a magnetic wooden “paper doll” ballerina for Christmas. The first night we got home from Kentucky she asked to put on her ballerina costume. I let her put on the shoes and tutu, since it was almost time for bed (thinking these would be easier to get into and out of when it was time for jammies). She ended up sleeping in those anyway, and has slept in some sort of ballerina get up every night since. And she dances the part too. It’s awesome.

Tomorrow will bring lots more Christmas-ing, with tons of shopping, wrapping, caroling and then packing and traveling to the Farm, where the Christmas-ing will continue through the weekend. So I’d better get some sleep!