Project 365: Week 2

Monday 1/2/17

Tuesday 1/3/17

Wednesday 1/4/17

Thursday 1/5/17

Will and Luke went to bed early (they were sick) and Emma really liked being the last one up.

Friday 1/6/17

Saturday 1/7/17

Sunday 1/8/17

I already missed a day... Oops. So I'm just counting extra pictures from the day before. ;)

Here we go again...

With the start of a new year, I've been thinking a lot about goals I want to accomplish this year. As far as this blog goes, I feel like I am constantly playing catchup. I'm never up to date, I never write as much as I'd like to (because I'm just trying to get up to date), and I end up just hoping that someday having lots of pictures will be enough. 

So, in my effort to start the new year off right, sorry for all the photo dumps to catch up on 2016. In an ideal world I would say more about each set of pictures and the fun things we did, but let's face it: sometimes you just gotta give up and move on. Forget last year, forget all the goals maybe I didn't exactly reach, and just go forward. 

With that out of the way, I've made a big goal for the year.

I'm doing another Project 365.

Remember last time? How I didn't finish editing all the pictures until like halfway through the next year?? Yeah, it was probably not the smartest way to do it. So I'm changing it up this time and I'm setting a few rules for myself. (Taylor helped me figure it out as we were driving home from St. George yesterday.)

Here are my unofficial rules:

1. Take pictures (with my camera) every day, no matter what.

2. Choose one picture per day to edit, or if one day the pictures don't turn out great, just choose a couple from another day that week. That way I won't have such a huge mountain of pictures to edit, and it will force me to be really mindful of what kind of picture I want at the end of each day.

3. Edit at least once a week and never be more than a week behind in editing.

4. Only share the ones I like.

So far I am 100% on target with my goal. :)

January 1, 2017

Luke's first time eating solid foods. He refused to swallow any of it.

Lake Arrowhead

The day after Christmas we headed to St. George, UT by way of Lake Arrowhead, CA. Taylor's aunt and uncle live there so we thought we'd visit them at their house (the kids and I had never been), stay the night, and then we'd all head up to St. George together. 

We picked a perfect day: right after a really big snow storm and the day that their water heater and boiler gave out. It ended up being fine. A little chilly downstairs where we were sleeping, but we got a good space heater, lots of blankets, and hunkered down for the night. The kids didn't even notice anything, except for the snow. It looked pretty magical and the kids asked the second we got there when they could go play. (It was already dark.) Will told everyone (several times that night, and several more times the next day) his plan: 

Wake up. 

Eat breakfast. 

Have a snowball fight.

Go sledding.

Make snow angels.

Drive. (to St. George)

So we woke up.

Ate breakfast.

Told the kids not to touch the yellow snow. (They had dogs.)

Realized Will's ski pants are too small.

The kids had a snowball fight.

Made snow angels.

Went sledding.

Got snow in their boots and said sledding was awful.

Taylor and Uncle Danny dug out a car stuck in the snow.

Danny took Will sledding again (he missed the first round).

Danny sledded down the hill with Will on his back.

Will loves sledding.

Drove to St. George.

Luke: 10 Things (ish)

Oh man. This boy just melts me every single day! On top of being our biggest, Luke is by far our happiest baby. Even through teething (He just got two teeth! One on Christmas, another a few days later.) he gives SO many smiles and smiles with his whole body. To top it off, now he sticks out his tongue, too. I can't believe he's already almost 6 months old! He drools all day long, loves sucking his thumb (and/or both fists in his mouth at once), sleeps through the night, growls at his teether toys (I think he gets mad that he can't fit the whole thing in his mouth), rolls over back and front like a champ but shows no interest in crawling yet, has the craziest hair (that I've already cut once and am getting ready to cut again), and the most kissable cheeks. (That was like 10 things, right?) Taylor and I seriously can't get enough of this kid. I know we shouldn't pick favorites... but come on?

Halloween 2016

For a good chunk of the year, Will's answer to the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was, "An In-N-Out chef!" So one day as we're getting lunch in the drive thru I say, "Hey Will, do you want to be an In-N-Out chef for Halloween?" He gasped, so excited, and yelled, "Yes!!"

So we ran with it.

And Luke even won a prize at our church Trunk-or-Treat!

Rolls and Cheese

Arm rolls, that is.

And this kid's cheese. :)

Conquering Fears

In 2015 we went to the pumpkin patch at Underwood Farms and long story short I accidentally kicked a pumpkin and almost completely tore my toenail off. It was super painful to walk on for while and even more painful(ly embarrassing) to tell people about it. 

So this year I wore proper footwear (closed-toed shoes), conquered my fears, and took the kids back to the pumpkin patch with Emma's joy school group. Go me!

In reality we weren't there long. We got there late and were the first to go. Going anywhere with three kids is no joke. Luke just wasn't having it so we fed some animals, got our pumpkins and headed home. We didn't even carve the pumpkins! We eventually turned one into pumpkin bread (after Halloween) and the other one rotted and got thrown away. But that still counts right?

More Deer Valley with the Smiths

Our first day at Deer Valley I just couldn't get over how beautiful it was. After years of drought in California I've gotten used to lots of brown in our landscape. Visiting the mountains in Fall has become one of my favorite things. Just walking around and watching these kids run with the colorful trees, big fluffy white clouds, and blue sky surrounding us was about as good as it gets.

And I'm not sure who had more fun taking these pictures, me or these cute kiddos.