Love these guys

1 Year

Dear Lily,

On Monday, you turned 1 year old.  You have made this, by far, the most magical year of our lives.  You are such a peppy, happy girl.  Right now, you love canned green beans (from our garden), running in the soft spring grass, hugging and kissing kitties, clapping, hugging mommy and daddy's legs, being chased, and most of all, climbing. You love to climb stairs, climb on top of your little riding truck, and anything else you can find. Your favorite thing to climb on so far, is the kitchen island. You have learned how to climb up on the shelf underneath it. You sit there like a little Queen, overseeing her empire. You also climbed up on the bed yesterday. Daddy had told me you'd tried this before, but I never thought you could do it. You put one foot on top of the metal bed frame and the next one in between the mattress and box spring. Then you grabbed the sheets with all you had and hiked your leg over. Hard to believe because that bed is almost as tall as you are!

Things I want to remember about this age:

-You can now sit quietly, reading a book to yourself. You get frustrated, however, when we read to you. You want to turn the pages at your own pace and when we read to you, it is far too slow for your taste.

- You say Bauw (ball), khhhhity (kitty),  duggy (doggy), mama, dada, hi and uh-oh.

- You are faster at warming up to people you don't know. You made friends with the woman behind us at the grocery store checkout the other day. You even reached out of the cart for her to pick you up.

- You are very kind. You always offer mommy and daddy bits of your food. When your little friend Oliver was visiting, you retrieved his pacifier and put it back in his mouth for him.

-  You know where your belly button is and find it when we ask you to.

-  You are making it quite difficult to change your diapers these days. You are too excited and want to go, go, go. We have to hold you down to get the job done sometimes.

You are the little glowing light of our lives and we don't know what we ever did before you came around.

Love,

mama

Homemade donuts

I got the hankering to make homemade donuts last night. Sooooo healthy, I know!

I used this recipe and they turned out pretty darned scrumptious. You can't beat hot yeast donuts. We had tons of them, so this morning Corey brought a bunch in to his employees. They were pretty stoked.

Average afternoon

One more for the night

Little things

For some reason, Lily pics at Corey's cuticles. It is funny because she doesn't mean to, she does it subconsciously. She doesn't do it to me, just him.

Patience

Oh no!

How could I forget to add this beautiful test shot?

Holy freaking camera, Batman!

Dear Canon 20D,

I love you. You know that. We have been through a lot together. You survived our move, my 365 project, and a baby, and a fledgeling portrait business. I do not know the exact count, but I think I could safely say you have loyally served me with thousands upon thousands (upon thousands) of photos in the 3+ years we've spent together. You did a wonderful job, you really did. You taught me so much as a photographer, for that, I am truly grateful.

Before you made your way to me (via eBay) you were owned for years by one, possibly two, other people. A digital camera surviving that long with that kind of use is pretty much unheard of. So instead of feeling like I am kicking you out in the cold, please think of it this as a form of retirement. You will still be here with us, your 8 megapixels faithfully housed in your comfy bag, ready to help out if called upon.

Hopefully, you will learn to love the newest member of the family, Ms. 21 megapixel Canon 5D Mk ii.  She will be doing the heavy lifting from now on, but just know, there will always be a special place in my heart reserved only for you, 20D.

Love always,

Brook


(Images from the 5D Mk ii)









This is how you know she's had enough...

Love them

My mom bought Lily the most adorable little slipper/shoes at the Bloomington Handmade Market a few weeks ago.  They looked adorable, of course, but after using them for a few days, I've decided they are more than just cute looking, they are super functional. Lily tends to take off her shoes if they show any signs of being uncomfortable. Slippers she usually loses because they tend to fall off by themselves. She has to wear something though, because walking around in socks is too slippery on our wood and tile floors. These little slippers have the same kind of grippy bottoms that pajamas have. They are similar in design to Robeez, but they are made of fabric instead of leather, so you can wash them.



It is cool that they are made by a local crafter, too. If you are interested, here is a link to her Etsy shop where you can see all of the cute patterns. Mom bought Lily this pair, because the design looks like a water lily :)

Busy day

We took Lily out mushroom hunting yesterday afternoon. We found some morels and she even got to pick a few.

It didn't take long for her to lose interest in fungus and move on to other, more interesting things. Like rocks.

... and leaves.

Later that evening, we met our adoption friends at the park. Here are a few shots from the evening.

Sylvie and her pretty blue eyes:

Henry and his daddy-o:

Peter holding the newest member of our group, Keegan (son of Matt and Eunice). I just love the look on Keegan's face. And how about Peter, he looks like a natural, eh? Peter and his husband, Doug are still waiting to be parents, so please think of them if you know of someone thinking of making an adoption plan. 

Heather, Philippe and the twins, enjoying some family time:

Nissy and Jim, who are still waiting for their little bundle. Please keep them in your thoughts, as well.

One more shot of Sylvie, since she's so photogenic...

We didn't know these people, but we just kept hoping they would get a room already!

Random funny Lily moment

A few nights ago, I rocked Lily to sleep, per usual, and carried her to her crib. As I laid her down, her eyes popped open, she giggled really loud, did 2 laying-down jumping jacks, closed her eyes and went back to sleep. She is a riot.

A few of my faves

Since the video got a little grainy when I uploaded it to the web, I wanted to include some better views of my favorites.

The little pretty.




The tree hugger.

The girly girl.

The silly willy.

And my #1 fave, the little poser.

This girl knows how to work the camera already!

Tiptoeing through the bluebells

The bluebells here at the park are looking so pretty right now.  We hiked back to the creek with Lily for some photos. I had trouble choosing which ones to post, so I put them together in a video. She has so many funny expressions. Just love her to pieces.

The quality of the video isn't the best, but you get the idea. You can make the video a little larger by hitting the button in the lower right corner of the video to go to full screen mode.

Anniverary

I am terrible with dates, but in my best recollection, it must be around the 15 year anniversary of my vegetarianhood. Sometime in the spring when I was 18 years old, I decided to not eat meat for just one day. My mom and dad insisted that it must be a phase, and I'd be back to eating meat in no time. Turns out, I never did. Looking back, being vegetarian has made me a much more adventurous eater, encouraging me to try things that I never would have tasted before. I used to be rather picky, but now I love trying new things. The other thing that I noticed shortly after I became vegetarian, was that food just "tasted better". I don't know how to explain it, it just seemed like fruits and vegetables had more "taste". For some reason, meat seemed to dull my taste buds, in a way. I'm not sure if other vegetarians experience that, or if I'm just weird.


So, 15 years after going vegetarian "cold turkey" (yeah, pun intended), here I am.

Cropped outtake from Saturday

This one makes me laugh. Every. Single. Time.

No photos

Darn me and my forgetfulness. This morning we finally took my mom and dad to the Beanblossom Bottoms boardwalk. We'd been talking about taking them forever and we finally got around to it. We are so lucky to have this amazing preserve so close to home. About 10 minutes into our hike, I realized that I had remembered my camera, but left my memory card at home. Doh! Corey gets so mad at me for not putting the card back in the camera after I download photos (with my card reader). Anyway, it was a neat hike all the same, even with out photographic documentation. We walked all but one tiny section of the 2.5 miles of boardwalk. The weather was absolutely beautiful. From the eagle viewing platform we could see one bald eagle sitting on it's gigantic nest, and other one perched on the top of a nearby tree. What a neat thing it was to see! Corey had Lily in a backpack carrier and we had to fight with her the entire way to keep her hat on (since the sun was blazing). Eventually she drifted off to sleep and the hat stayed on, until the wind picked up, that is.

After all that walking, it was time to eat. We decided to go for Burmese food at "Mandalay Restaurant".  The food was exceptional. We loved the "Paratha with Yellow peas" appetizer and all of our entrees were really good, as well. My soup was ginormous and would have been enough to feed all four of us by it's self. Yum! Another good day, indeed.

One other funny thing that happened today- after mom and dad left, I was sitting in the living room, folding laundry. Lily went in her room to play with some toys. I heard her getting into the little crate under her bookshelf. The crate holds the musical instruments that her mamaw and papaw got her for Christmas. She has never really shown too much interest in them before, so I had stored them there to wait until she was a little older. Well, the next thing I know, I hear this little "shaka shaka shaka" and out toddles Lil with a maraca in each tiny hand. I laughed so hard, I cried. 

Easter 2010

Mom and dad are visiting this weekend and my brother and his family stopped by on their drive home from Florida. Since Lexi wasn't going to be here for long, we made the most of our time together, dying eggs and having a little egg hunt. Lexi really got into they dying:








The finished product:





Mom and dad supervising:





Dad keeping Hunter entertained:





After the eggs were dry, the Easter Bunny took and hid them. He also laid some plastic eggs. Some were filled with candy, some had little pom-pom chicks (that I helped the Easter Bunny make), and some had blueberries and raspberries. The raspberries were a HUGE hit with Lexi, which made me very happy :)


Lily picked up a few eggs, but it didn't hold her interest too long:








Lexi, on the other hand, was all about the hunt:








We took the nice weather as an opportunity to take some family portraits:





Grandma, grandpa and the grandkids:





Lexi is a really great big sister. Unfortunately, I don't think I was ever this nice to my brother...




Dad thinks the title of this one should be "Family Tree":





Like grandma, like granddaughter:





Hunter looking adorable, as usual:





What a great day!