A friendly letter

Dear Computer,

Welcome back! I am so glad that your USB ports are fixed and that it was covered under warranty. You have no idea how I have missed you. The first few days, I constantly wandered back over to where you usually sat and wasn't sure what to do with myself. I actually sometimes found myself moving the mouse around, although there was no computer there. Twenty days without you was difficult, my friend, but it also alerted me to some disturbing facts. I am a little too dependent on you and things are going to have to change between us. I'm not breaking up with you, I love you too much for that, but I have to set some boundaries in order for us to have a healthy relationship.

In your time away, I was able to read two novels, take random naps, play more with my kids, stay up on the laundry and housecleaning and accomplish many more random tasks. I learned that you actually can accomplish something in 5 minutes, when I would have usually just wasted that time checking email or facebook. I do not need to know what everyone is doing all day, and can be perfectly content checking you a couple times a day and CLOSING you for the rest of the time. Of course, you will be needed for projects, picture editing, blogging, etc. but you have to stop wasting my precious little bits of time through out the day.

I do not want my children to remember me constantly on the computer or the phone (I'll save the letter to my phone for another day), and so as difficult as it may be, you need to understand you are not my priority. Things are changing, dear friend, and I need to have some discipline. Thanks for understanding, and please don't break again.

Love, Amy

Toes in the sand

I love the title of that post in the middle of February! Another example of the amazing weather we have been having. We spent some time at Dash Point State park on the beach, and all the kids began our adventure with their boots on, nice and neat.

But the creeks and water EVERYWHERE were too tempting and soon my girls were soaked. I could actually hear the water sploshing in Addison's boots as she walked, and it only took one fall to make her a big dirty mess. It didn't slow her down one bit. She just looked down, said, "dirty!" and kept on going. Hailey also went in the water past her boots and ended up soaked.

 

 

I love how Levi is looking at Hailey like she is crazy. 

The amazing thing was that it wasn't cold! I even went barefoot because I was the only one without boots and it was plenty warm. So, it only made sense that Addison end up like this. In the middle of February.

 

Ah, if only this weather would last.

Friends + Sunshine = Fun

We have been going to numerous parks and beaches with friends to enjoy the amazing weather we have been having. It's the perfect opportunity to practice more with my camera, and I have been taking TONS of pictures.

It is near impossible to get a good shot of five girls ages 2-7, but still fun to try. The Edwards girls love the Bell girls!

And we love the Jones boys too!

Although, the love is a little "one-sided" when it comes to Addison. She loves Levi and Landon and wants to hug them, talk to them and generally mess up whatever they are doing. 

And I love these girls, Sara and Andrea, who share my obsession of discovering the perfect picture spot, exposure, lighting, photoshop action, template, etc. and take millions of pictures right along with me.

Photo fun

Just wanted to share some of my fun with photoshop. I found these great templates to use for blogging, scrapbooking, or possibly even to print bigger and frame or something. My friend Andrea found a great site with free photoshop actions, templates, storyboards etc. and I am spending way too much time checking things out on it. Check it out here, coffeeteaphotography, if you have plenty of time on your hands.

Another fun thing Andrea showed me is Poladroid, which puts a little Polaroid camera on your desktop that you can drag pictures to and create this kind of thing...

Just for fun sometimes. 

Those are all the secrets I discovered today. Tomorrow I really need to clean the house and do some laundry. Oh, and take care of my children.

It's time...

for Addison to learn about this:

I have put this off for a couple of months now, knowing she was showing all the signs of being ready to potty train, but not ready to go through the torture. Both of the other girls had been just about totally trained by the time they were two, but it's harder with child number three! We finally had a day to stay home yesterday, so I decided to dive in. She had two accidents in the morning and that was it - the whole rest of the day she did PERFECTLY. I couldn't believe it, it had to break some sort of world record of best first day of potty training. I didn't even remind her most of the time - she just would run over to her little potty by herself and then say, "I did it!" Of course it helped to have some of these as motivation...

 

And she was completely naked for most of the day. Every time I tried to put something on her, she wanted it off. I didn't argue, figuring less wet clothes to wash, however I ended up with no wet clothes to wash. She just went about all her normal activities, minus any clothing. This is only cute when you are two:)

So, I keep being afraid that it is a fluke and won't last. But we actually left the house today (she wore a pull-up), and she kept it dry most of the day, telling me if she had to go to the bathroom. I am crossing my fingers that it is really this easy for once.

So sweet

I came home late last night after working out and found this in front of my toothbrush. Awwwwww.....

Science experiments

Symantha did a bunch of extra chores to earn this Rainbow Crystal kit from Scholastic. It turned out to have some pretty cool experiments for the kids to do, which did not require a lot of work or other materials - my favorite! We read a bunch of information on what crystals are, how they form, etc. Then began the experiments.
This was the first one, which was the best so far. They went to bed with this cardboard star thing in some clear liquid, looking like this...

And woke up to discover this! That got some oohs and ahhs. Even from me:)

Then they mixed these gooey crystals with food coloring to make rainbow crystals. This took a few days and didn't look that different than what we started out with... not sure exactly what they were supposed to do, but the process was still fun!

We still have more experiments to do, and they are looking forward to them.