Getting that Perfect Christmas Card Family Picture

Last weekend, we decided that we needed to get ourselves together to take the always pleasant Christmas Card Family Photo. 


You know that annual picture where you lovingly request your children to put something on that resembles the Holiday season, then pose for a few hundred pictures. And for goodness sake, please look happy while we are doing it! Yes! We are a Happy Family! 


We wanted to take our big picture outside by the pool this year; but of course it was way too windy to do that on the day we finally get ourselves in gear to take the picture.  


So we move indoors to the living room by the Christmas Tree. I really wanted to use the lighted Palm Tree in the picture. 


Which was suppose to be by the pool. 


But it was too windy. 


Once again, procrastination ruins a good plan.

So we move the Palm Tree to the living room. 

Yeah. I know. It doesn't work. Darn. 

So the Palm Tree gets axed. In come the kids and the dog. 

Okay now let's make sure the remote clicker is working. 

Looks good. 

Look, I joined the picture now! That is the beauty of the remote. Very handy little device. 

Now if we could just get Maggie to look at the camera. 

Maggie, please look at the camera. Please.

Well, you know that old saying they have in Hollywood. Never work with dogs or

Children!

I think my motivation was gone by that last shot.

Thanks for visiting me. 

Spring Break Fun

The boys are on their spring break right now, so last weekend we decided to drive to Ohio to spend the weekend with family. We went up to Columbus, OH and went to their science center, COSI. (Be warned now: this post is extremely photo heavy. These are all pictures of our visit to COSI.)

This is their Grossology exhibit. The boys really liked this one. :-P

Here is Chris carrying 

Connor out of a LARGE nose. 

Next up was the Ocean exhibit. Here are the boys in a submarine. It was a pretty tight fit in there. 

Around the corner from the submarine was a really fun cave with all kinds of water activities. The boys ended up a little wet after this. Thank goodness it was a really warm day! 

I included the picture below because I was really impressed with how well our new point and shoot camera did in these low-light conditions. We got a small Canon camera to have on hand when we didn't want to lug the big DSLR around. I was very happy with these pictures! It is not as good as the big camera, but great for these kinds of outings.

After the Ocean exhibit and getting a little wet, we went outside for a little while. It was a really gorgeous day in Columbus, OH. 

I think it was around 70 degrees. 

The boys are "lifting" a car in the photo below. 

Next up was the Gadgets area. 

Here is Spencer getting a little wind-blown. :-)

We also got to see our very first (and hopefully our last) game of RAT BASKETBALL!!!! 

Those are real, live rats playing basketball. 

And here is Connor cheering on his Rat. (Our rat won!)

We finished up our day with a little experimenting in the Gadgets area. We only had time for two experiments, but as you can see from the photo below, it was an "explosive" experience! 

We dropped Mentos into some soda and got ourselves a soda geyser. This was a very easy one to do, and we are going to try and replicate it here at home. It was a huge hit with the boys. 

So if you made it to the end of this post, THANKS! We finished off our weekend by having dinner with Chris' family and the boys got to see their cousin Brocke play some hockey. I also got to do a little outlet shopping, which is always fun for me! 

Thanks again for visiting me! 

It's a new post from me!

Really! I'm still here!

So the last week has been crazy! We got back from Disney World a week ago tonight. We had a fantastic trip. The weather was perfect, our flights were on time and smooth, the food was great, and we did some new things at Disney that we had missed before. I'm still in the process of going through my pics. I think I took around 700, so that is going to be a big process to narrow them down.

The main reason I haven't really updated anything is because right when we got back home, the flu hit our house. And I mean right when we got home. Like I stated earlier, we got home last Tuesday night. We got to our house around 10:30pm and at 1:30am Connor woke up sick with the flu. Poor guy was sick all night. And then he was just really weak and sleepy for about another 3 days. And of course right when he starts feeling better, it hit me. So being gone on vacation plus coming home to a week of sickness equals me being really behind on things.

I thought I would share some of my pictures from my Project 365 (Taking a picture of the day for the entire year.)

This is poor Connor on day two of his illness. Doesn't he look pathetic? Poor thing. I didn't notice the lego creature behind him until I uploaded the picture. I think Spencer set him there to keep Connor company.

This is one of Spencer's Lego creations.
Chris made the boys smoothies on Sunday. They had been bothering me all week to make them and I was actually getting ready to go the grocery store to get the ingredients when the flu hit me. They had seen it on the Disney channel and wanted to give them a try. So Chris took them to the grocery store and made them all up and .........the boys didn't like them. Figures. (And just for the record they were good. I tasted them.)
Here is Chris replacing the hinges on the door to the basement. Connor and Spencer both helped him with the drill.
And the last two are some pretty shots I got. This is of the blossoms on the Pear Tree in my front yard. I think it is a Bradford Pear Tree. I love these trees. They bloom early in the spring and are one of the last to lose their leaves in the fall.
And this is the view from our bedroom window today. It is a rainy day. I like the reflection of the curtains in the rainy window.
Phew! That was a long post! If you read it all and looked at all of the pics, Thanks! I hope to have some more Disney pictures to post soon.
Thanks again for visiting me!