I bought tights.

I have officially crossed a line somewhere ... who would have believed that I would buy tights for my baby girl? But she needed them. And if I could have found the right size, she would have also been the proud owner of little black mary janes. Too bad I couldn't get them in her size. :-)

This is Quinn, on Christmas Eve, after mass. She is fascinated by our Christmas tree - probably because I have 10 or so strings of lights on it. She was lying next to the tree, quietly watching, when paparazzi mommy got the camera out.

The attempt to get a photo of all 3 of them earlier in the night was not so successful. Griffin is impossible to photograph. He looked so cute in his little jacket, too ... Noah, on the other hand, is more than willing to hold Quinn and pose. Gotta love that!



We let the boys open one present tonight ... new Cars jammies. They both liked the gift, which is pretty amazing since it is clothing. Again, not much success in getting a photo of G where you can SEE his jammies, but here are a couple of him playing with his beloved Cars. The best is when Griffin says "a-cow" and "cha-chigga" (noises that McQueen and Chick make in the movie). We also learned that the Cars book from Dave & Connie is NOT a good thing to take to church, because of said noisemaking.



Merry Christmas!

Hello, Baby Quinn.

She is here. Born around 2 am on December 15. 8 pounds 15 ounces, and 20 inches long, with lots of dark hair.

We are officially in love.

Seeing Santa

As everyone knows, only the insane visit Santa at the mall on a weekend. We decided to visit him on a Monday, after my weekly baby check. Great plan, right? Noah would get home from school, the boys would eat lunch, G could sneak in a quick nap before we had to leave for the 1:40 appointment, and then we'd go visit the guy in red.

Except that I screwed up and my doctor appointment was at 1:10. Which meant that G did NOT get a nap. And poor Noah had a nasty cough, so he couldn't go to the well-child room at the clinic like usual. That is where things started falling apart. We planned to leave Griffin in the well-child room, and he seemed perfectly willing to stay there ... until he saw the door close with me on the other side. He started SCREAMING at the top of his lungs, and ran for the door. Noah and I checked in at the clinic desk, then I ran back to the exam area to leave a sample. When I finished, I decided to check on G. I rounded the corner where the receptionists sit, across from the well-child room, and heard them talking about Griffin. Oy. He was still screaming. I had no choice but to rescue him from the well-child room and take him to the appointment.

Fast forward 20 minutes, after the appointment. We loaded back into the van and headed to the mall. Santa was on break, so we shopped for a few last Christmas presents, then got into the line to visit Santa. Noah was prepared. He wants this thing called "The Mega Rig Arctic Adventure Snow Monster Mission" - what a mouthful, eh?




He was thinking ahead and asked me to find it in the toy catalogue so he could SHOW Santa. I did one better ... I printed the image and name off of Amazon.com. So Noah was ready, with his prized toy picture in hand, when it was our turn. But he didn't want to sit on Santa's lap. We had already discussed it. Too bad Santa wasn't in agreement with our discussions. Noah walked up to him and started talking, and Santa grabbed him and pulled him down - poor kid. He didn't want to risk annoying Santa so he just perched there, uncomfortably, as they talked. He showed Santa the picture, and to Santa's credit, he kept the picture "so he'd remember." I'm going to have one happy, happy, happy 6 year old on Christmas morning. :-)

G, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with Santa. He'd sit on the tiny stool somewhat NEAR Santa, but that was it. And he kept trying to make a beeline for the oversized scooter that was a prop for the Santa area. I'd take my eye of him for 2 seconds and I'd hear "RIDE - RIDE - RIDE" and see a little red streak making a break for the scooter. I happened to have a picture of the scooter - my test shot when I was getting my camera ready to shoot.






It was quite an adventure. I should have brought a helper ... I have virtually no photos that turned out. But that is OK. Part of the whole Santa adventure is the chaos, right?

School is almost over for the semester.

YAY! It has been a long semester, even though I only have 2 classes. The first, Combined Media, is something I enjoyed. We did Photoshop and video projects. Video was new to me, but I liked it for the most part. And it inspired me to dig out our old video camera from the basement - totally forgot we had one! Maybe I'll take some video of the kids.

My final project for Combined Media was to create a video. The problem with art school projects is that they can't be "cliche" ... "predictable" ... "obvious" ... or anything like that. Hard to do, especially when your brain is linear and literal like mine is. I decided to do a video about Elmo. Remember when Tickle Me Elmo came out, 10 years ago? Now there is a new version. I decided to make a little 1 minute video about Elmo, shot from his point of view, as people tried to snatch him up when he was new. If you click this link you can download the movie.



If the link is not working, cut and paste this into your browser window and you'll get to the download page: http://www.yousendit.com/download/eG1go8GsQa95TA%3D%3D

Keep in mind, when I showed my teacher yesterday, she thought it was a success. :-) I photographed Elmo against a white background, used Photoshop to remove the background, added some hand-drawn backdrops and other elements, and then combined audio. You don't want to know how long all of that took me. Of course, it might have been a quicker process if I hadn't had a little guy who got really excited and ran to my computer shouting "EL-MO" every time he heard the freaky Elmo giggle. ;-)

My second class, Life Drawing, was not as fun for me. I learned a lot, though, and I guess that is really the whole point. I'm glad it is almost over. I loved the teacher but the projects were hard for me to do. I don't have a photo of the final project for that class. It is a big drawing - 3x4 feet, maybe? - and I used watercolors, paints, and charcoal. I'm just glad the class is almost over.

In other news, baby girl has shown no signs of making an appearance. So my dr let me set the induction date for December 15. The end is near!

I don't have a lot of pictures from Noah's birthday party, and I don't feel comfortable posting them on the internet without asking permission from the other parents, so instead I'll show you these from the last "nice" day we had.