For My Mother

We have designated this summer as the summer to clean out, clean up, organize, and settle.

Hence, the weekend project. Some of you may remember the photo of Spencer hidden in pile of stuff in the garage this past winter. We'd never actually gotten unpacked last fall when we moved in. The garage was filled with boxes and odds and ends that left only enough room for our cars to get in the garage, and no more. Well, this weekend Vlad took a break from work and we dove in and unpacked and organized our garage. That was something that we had never fully done when we were in Minnesota. I'm amazed at the difference that it makes in helping us feel settled - like this really is our house, really is our spot, really is the place we'll be staying for quite a while. It really helps this house feel like our home, and not just a staging ground. The kids now have a place to wheel around on their scooters, Claire has been using her trike, and this morning I went and sat on the garage steps and just ENJOYED my garage - of all things!

And my mother is quite thrilled, because the garage was a huge eye sore for her when she was here. So these photos are for my mother.

And now Vlad can go back to working - in the gazebo newly-furnished with furniture...from the garage.

Fingers in the Sky

Last night there was a storm at our house. I always worry about tornadoes when I see a thunderstorm, so they were on my mind already. Then when I saw the sky turn darker and the wind pick up around 8:30, I went out back to check the clouds, and found that directly over our house a low and dark thundercloud was rotating, and little fingers were starting to form. Our neighbors were in their yard, and scurried back into their house. I grabbed the girls and ran downstairs (the boys were at VBS with a friend). Vlad stayed upstairs to watch the storm, and suggested I come up and watch it too until it actually presented a real threat, because it was fascinating. We'd never seen a rotating cloud so up close. Well, we watched it until it passed over our house, and then went to the front where we watched the storm evolve and continue to rotate. Several times little fingers started forming, but they never actually made a tornado - the storm eventually fizzled out to a quiet, relaxing rain storm that lasted several hours into the night. But while the storm was moving and changing, the sun was setting over in the west and casting an orange and pink glow into the tall towers of the cloud formation. I cannot describe how tall these cloud formations were, nor the spectacle it was to behold. It was frighteningly stunning. At the top of the sky were wispy white clouds, unaffected by all that was transpiring below them. Then the yellow clouds underneath started to look like the bottom of an egg carton - little bubbly puffs. Underneath that were rolling, bubbling, towers of clouds that looked like bright orange and pink pillars. At the base of the pillars were darker, stormier, moodier clouds that kept swirling, blowing into each other and threatening to reach down to earth. At one point two horizontal arms of cloud blew together and formed a semi-circle like an amphitheatre right in front of our house. It was like a heavenly stage. What an unbelievable sight!

This was not long after the swirling cloud passed over our house:

This is the amphitheatre formed in front of our front porch. Can you believe this is the same storm, only fifteen minutes after the previous photo, and with the same camera settings?:
To give an idea of the amazing spectacle, and the enormity of this cloud formation (you can see the housetops/treetops at the bottom of the photo). right side of amphitheatre:
left side of amphitheatre:

So glad this spectacular storm fizzled, and all our plants were watered without incident!!

New Look

Some of you may notice the new look.

Sigh.

I didn't really want to do it, but thecutestblogontheblock's account with photobucket was expiring, and all my backgrounds went missing, so I just decided to simplify since blogger now has this handy dandy template designer (how cool is that?!). So, run-on sentences and all, it's still the same me. Still the same us. Just with a different background.

On a different note, take a gander at the cute little 3 yr old boy over at my photography blog!

The Skate Park Adventure

I've been looking for some more fun things to do in this city with my kids. Not too long ago I discovered a small skate park just a few minutes away from our house. It's nothing like the one downtown, but it is enough for kids to go and scoot around for a while. So last night me and my four little ones set off to have some rip-roaring time on the ramps. When we arrived there was a group of about seven 13 and 14 year old boys there with bikes. (Bikes weren't allowed, but they'd taken care of that - the word "bikes" was scratched off the rules sign, as was the part that said any child under "16" was supposed to be supervised). As soon as we stepped inside the fence, I could hear the boys throwing around swear words right and left, trying to one-up each other on their coolness and manhood. It was ignorable until two of the boys got into an argument, screaming in each other's faces, puffing their little chests, throwing their arms around, yelling things that didn't make sense, but that included lots of profanity which, thankfully, my children don't understand yet. I'm actually not sure those teenage children understood it either, but they were sure using it! So in a lull during their macho-match I called over to them, "If you guys have to scream and swear around little children, maybe you should go across the parking lot and finish your fight over there." They looked at me, a little shocked, a little confused that I would stick my nose in, and a little embarrassed that in their scramble for rank and position, I had pulled rank and told them what to do. One of them couldn't get a I-don't-know-what-to-do grin off his face. They just looked at me and said nothing. I looked back, silently wondering if I should have just kept my mouth shut, and wondering where my phone was in case I had to call the cops. It wasn't but about 10 more minutes, and they left, leaving the skate park to me and the kids. And then the fun began!!!









Never to be left behind, Claire had to try the scooter too!


After a few minutes, Collin wasn't feeling it. Thankfully, he found a puddle and started searching for frogs. Then he discovered that the ramps worked well as slides, and it was all fun after that!


The little princess, on top of the world.

My favorite photo of the day!

A strange little mix of photos.

This week I'm putting together my new photography website. It's not the blog - it's a full-blow website. In putting together my portfolio, I realized that although I've taken thousands of photos of my kids, I've deleted 99.9% of them, and most of the rest that I've kept aren't professional quality. I practice on my kids all the time, mostly working with the lighting and the settings on my camera, but not usually putting together a full-blown beautiful photograph where the kids aren't still dressed in pajamas, or don't have peanut butter smeared on their little faces. And that's how I came to the fairly shocking realization that I have very few photos of my own kids that I would want to put in a portfolio. So I decided it was time to put an end to the madness and actually get some good shots of my own kiddos. Unfortunately, they were so very uncooperative about having photos taken, that I only got as far as a decent few shots of Katya, and another few okay ones of Claire, and then some not-quite-so-good ones of Collin before I gave up. Spencer was spared. It really is true: photographing your own kids is the hardest job for a photographer.

These are the keepers for Claire and Katya:











And this is my favorite of Collin:


Of course, if he has dressed up like a Turtle, or has caught a frog, then posing for the camera is a whole 'nother deal.

My Big Sister

Dear Little Bloggy Blog -
It's been forever since I gave you any loving attention. Please dont' be hurt. I'm behind on most of my communication, and many dear friends have been hard-pressed to get any recent communication out of me. But I'm back home now from galavanting around the globe, and I promise to catch you up on what we've been up to lately.
But first things first - my little baby is turning one year old in just six more days.
My how this year has flown. I'm not doing a one-year photo shoot, per say, but I do have some recent photos of her. A sweet, adorable little button. This baby has been a precious and much-loved addition for us all. I love you so much, Little Katya. What a wonderful year it has been with you in tow.

Love always, Mommy!