Here we go again

It's that time of year again.

Baseball Season!!

Daddy is absent a little more, The dinner menu becomes more like the kiddie menu and the ballpark becomes our second home.

Today was the first game I made it to this week, with having sick kids and all.
Just me, Nooshie and KD.
I can say in all honesty, I am looking forward to many more this summer. Beautiful weather, great view and ballpark food. Well, maybe not so much the last one, but it is better than macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets.

Sharing

I have, over time, come to terms with the fact that I am the mother to 4 kids.
An amazing, talented, beautiful and very giving mother at that :) Oh, and the kids are good too.

However, I do have to admit that I have been finding a new reason every day to be shocked that there are FOUR of them.

Holy Cow woman- have you no restraint?!

This is how I felt today- the freak show that paraded her brood of wild banshees through the grocery store for a package of diapers.

No school on this Monday, the teachers needing an in service or something like that.

I am often asked if all four are mine, or a comment is made about what a handful I have. Beans teacher just last week, commented on her thoughts as she watched me with all four while picking the kids up from school. She thought I was amazing and then said something about being one busy mama.

I see people ALL the time with lots of kids- do people really NEVER see them? or do they just feel the need to remind me that they know how to count?

Either way, after I was done offering the free point and talk show at the grocery store and the older woman standing in line behind us at the checkout was done touching and cooing at my baby- we left.

If this was not good enough, it was necessary to take KD to the doctor. She had a little bit of a fever, a little bit of a cough, but more importantly I felt like she needed to be seen.

C asked me if I was going to see if anyone would be willing to watch the other 3 kids while I took KD to the doctor for a half hour.

I asked if he wanted to watch all of them for me.

Uh, yeah, that is why I took them with me.
I like to keep the friends I do have.

Long story short- they all have strep. And at a $25 office co-pay and a $3o co-pay each for the medicine, I am pretty sure that this is the one time I would have been okay with them NOT sharing something.

Four kids; not so bad.
Four kids; sick, crabby and indecisive- I could live with out.
Mommy's gonna need a break after this. Or just an uninterrupted nap. If that even exists.

Family time. Sweet, sweet family time

Easter is such a blessing and I am grateful that we were able to spend it together as a family and remember Christ and his gift to each of us.

We spent our weekend celebrating life and love. Just the six of us.
Coloring eggs, playing at the park, opening baskets and sharing the reason we celebrate with our children.
Two wonderful days of family time. Quality, fun family time.

Hoping your Easter weekend was just as enjoyable as ours.

Our baby is in LOVE with bubbles.

I took several photos to get a good one. and I did. But this one really just describes the family- a little all over the place:)

Waiting was the hardest and longest part of coloring the eggs.:)

This is one of the places I have found that I will add to my list for photo shoots. Beans had a hard time acting natural and insisted she could not stop being so stiff, but you get the idea- still a great place.

Mommies band aids

I am sure that every mommy at some point in their life gets the privilege of explaining feminine products to their child. Maybe it is a required speech to your age appropriate daughter, or in my case it could be your very active toddler boy.
I am also sure that I am not alone when I say that using the bathroom when you have little kids in the house, does not mean you will be allowed any kind of privacy.

A few months ago, I was interrupted by Nooshie while using the bathroom. He wanted to know what I was doing. I wasn't in the mood to go over the truth, and honestly I am sure that if I had explained all of it, that it would be used against me at some point. Probably in public and I envision utter embarrassment as my two year old shares with the world that mommy has a friend visiting.

So I elected to explain, that mommy had special band aids for her owies and he was okay with that.

Just this evening, Nooshie was yelling about something from upstairs. C ran up to make sure he was okay and when he got to him, he let out a "Oh my gosh!"
I did not hesitate, I too ran up the stairs to make sure everyone was okay.

Everyone was more than okay.

Nooshie was sitting in the middle of the bathroom floor, surrounded by pink wrappers and several of mommies unused band aids.

C took Nooshie downstairs and I stayed to clean it all up.
After picking up twenty or so, I noticed something on one of them.

It was a sticker.

I went back through the others and noticed they all had a sticker on them.

Nooshie was simply putting stickers on all of mommies special band aids, to help all the owies feel better.

Jumping In

I have decided to take photography seriously. I have always known that I was going to go back to school once KD was in school, I just wasn't 100% positive on what that direction would be. I was thinking I would go to a tech school and gain a degree to be an official techie, and I still might do that, but I was online late last night and reading on how to improve my photographs. I got a lot of useful information and while I REALLY want a new fancy schmancy camera, reality is, the one I have will do everything I want. (for now anyway)

I never did read the manual when we got the camera, it was just something to take pictures of the kids with. Now it has become a passion. So I discovered that if I figure out how to really truly use all the features this camera has, that it really does do everything I want it to.
I have friends that give me a hard time because I always have my camera. "Edward Scissor hands, except with camera" is I believe the exact name they have for me.
I'm not sure if I'm offended or not- we'll just call it a complement for now.

I am looking into taking online classes at the New York Institute of Photography. It will take me 12 to 24 months to complete their course depending on the time I am able to commit to it. I am excited at the possibility to call myself a professional photographer and pursue a potential career with it.

For now, I am just thankful for all the families that have allowed me to photograph them. I am officially going to call myself an amateur photographer that will photograph on location. I love the natural unfiltered light you can get with pictures and the true colors that can be captured. I plan on going for a drive this weekend with the family- I am looking for 4 locations to do photographs.
1. An abandoned railroad track.
2. a large field preferably with an old barn or building on it
3. a cathedral with big antique style doors and windows
4. a run down, yet tasteful old building that appears to be in a city setting.

If anybody knows where I can find any of these, please feel free to let me know.

So for now, here are some action photos I took of the boys this afternoon using a new found setting I have on my camera. Not perfect, but I am still learning. I love that they dumped the rest of the Cheetos on the trampoline, it was perfect for me to capture the in-flight picture.

The results are in

The view from the doctors office- I like all the colors.

Chan officially has strep and scarletina. The doctor ran the strep throat swab just because he had too, but he knew that is exactly what it was.
After coming home early from school on Wednesday and staying home Thursday, Chan was feeling better and ready to go back to school today. I checked him over just to make sure he really was okay and when I looked in his mouth, his tongue was covered in a white film. There was no way I was letting him go to school without a physician saying it was okay. He was bummed, but he thought if the doctor cleared him, he could still make it to a half a day of school.

Poor kid, gets Monday off also with a teacher in-service day. Who is this child that wants to go to school so badly? I sure do like this.

Cute Pictures

I had some fun taking pictures of the two little kids today, so I thought I'd share. Nooshie was just chilling in the bath- too cute to go un-noted and then an adorable little conversation with Spiderman.
I captured KD just as she was waking up from her nap- one of my most favorite moments in life.