Be Mine

Last week I took this photo of my live-in model. It's my big effort for Valentine's Day.

We're kinda boring and don't make too big a fuss about holidays around here, but my honey is really good at taking care of me everyday. He came home yesterday and gave me a very long hug and told me, in a heartfelt way, how much he loves and appreciates me and what a good woman I am. He tells me he loves me about 12 times a day. He folds most of the laundry. He chops wood, hauls hay and takes care of the cars, yard and fences. He fixes breakfast on Saturdays and gets the kids to school - while I sleep in - on Fridays. So most days feel like Valentines Day for me. I'm married to one of the most affectionate, demonstrative and helpful guys I know.

And he's cute, too.

Happy V-day everybody.

Cool Tidings

I have some fun news, but you'll have to head over to my photography blog to get it.

Click HERE to see one of my highs this week. 

Here's a hint:

Brynn and Her Bread

For the last few months, Brynn has been desperately wanting two things. Actually, she desperately wants dozens of things at any given time, but the last little while it seems like she has mostly been obsessed with baking a small loaf of bread and with appearing on my blog.

So a while back, we finally made her tiny loaf of bread and she immediately jumped on the fact that this could qualify as a blog entry and that we needed to take pictures. 

We inherited this little loaf pan from Marty's mother who died when he was 17. She was a great bread maker and had lots of nice old loaf pans which I commandeered from her kitchen soon after I got married. Any good bread maker knows that old vintage pans make the best bread.

I know how to make pretty good white bread, but I like to feed my family wheat bread, which I definitely can't make, so I don't usually make bread at all. So once a year or so when I do make it, my family thinks it's as good as cookies or something. And I usually have to give some of it away so we don't end up gorging ourselves on it.

And since we were already taking pictures, I whipped out my lovely macro lens and took a little bread detail. Yum, huh.

And for a few minutes anyway, my girl was satisfied.

Playing Othello with Batman

 

My boy wants to be Batman

all the live long day

He has this nifty costume

and in it, he doth play

He runs outside

he leaps off stuff

he can even kinda glide

He has a really awesome cape

that sweeps out long and wide

And sometimes,

on the Day of Rest

(as you can plainly see)

we play our favorite board game.

My little bat and me.

~ 1/12/2011

 Ann Hepworth

Year in Review Slideshow - 2010

I did one of these last year and was glad I did.



I showed it to the fam tonight and they loved it - "Let's watch it again!"  Kids so love to see themselves in pictures. I wonder.... at what point in life does that change? 13? 15? 33?

Thanks to all our friends and family who helped to make 2010 a really great year for us. We love you!

(And thanks to Molly and _______ (prefers to remain nameless) for some of the photos.)

2011: so far - - LAZY

If I had to use one word to describe my 2010 it would be:

OVERTHETOPINCREDIBLYOVERBOOKEDCRAZYBUSY!

It's good to be busy, but last year was a little much. It culminated in the busiest fall season of my photographic career (such as that is) and then a crazy-as-usual Christmas Season. So last week? The kids were out of school, it seriously snowed and was colder than it's ever been before. And what did I do?

Nuthin'

Well, relatively nuthin'. I cooked some meals, fed 6 horses, broke their ice, did laundry, did dishes, put away Christmas, moved furniture, played games with the kids, cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, swept, cleaned the kitchen, went to work, took the kids to two movies, went to a wedding, did some young women projects, babysat Emily's new baby, hung out with Marty for a change, made cookies, visited with friends, went to Zumba, read 5 books.....

But compared to what I usually do? That's nuthin'.

And I'm not gonna lie, it felt real good. It hit me in the middle of my fall photo rush that I might have lost the ability to just chill. But I'm happy to report that that isn't the case. My Kindle and I can apparently chill for several hours in a day when I don't have photos to edit. I usually get quite sick this time of year, but I didn't  (except for a little upset tummy on NYE). I took a vacation this time instead of my body forcing one on me. Wow, what a concept. And I completely avoided my computer. Ah...

Anyhooo.... We took the kids - and Molly - to see Tangled on Sat night. Probably everybody has seen Tangled already, but if you haven't, YOU GOTTA SEE IT. It was AWESOME. Disney at it's best. So clever, so heartwarming, so charming....




And of course the horse, Maximus, was my very favorite character. Brilliant. He's what we would call in Parelli, a Left Brain Extrovert. My favorite Horsenality. Toooooo funny.



And another great clip:



Okay, sorry, enough with the Tangled. Oh, I can't resist: one more...



HA! And then he says, "You broke my smolder." Insanely brilliant.

So I hope everybody is having a relaxing, LAZY, 2011 so far. I've sure been enjoying mine.

Christmas Morning 2010

I'm kind of a Grinch - I just don't love the commercial side of Christmas, but I have to admit, we had a really nice morning. The reason it was nice was because the kids were so sweet with each other and happy and appreciative of what they were given. We've never spoiled the kids much at Christmas, but this year we decided to go with President Monson's adage: Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read - and it worked out great.

The kids were also very motivated to get presents for each other this year. I didn't encourage them at all. Jaxon was especially conscientious about choosing gifts for people and especially gracious about what he was given. It did my heart good to see the kids showing so much love to each other.

Luke wanted to know if he could use my "real" name. Too cute. He wrapped this himself and even dug up a beautiful bow.

All Fred wants for Christmas is for us to keep the tree up forever. He has spent A LOT of time under there in the last few weeks.

For a special Christmas breakfast, we broke out the long lost waffle maker. I literally haven't made homemade waffles in like 12 years. I found a great recipe online for buttermilk waffles and they were definitely a hit.

My theory on cooking: If you hardly ever do it, people really appreciate it when you do.

We had our good friend Molly up for the day and had a super yummy turkey dinner. We went on a walk, played the new Wii games and had just a nice day. Whew, I'm always so glad when it's over. Merry Christmas!