G's preschool program

Griffin had his preschool Christmas program last Friday. It was awesome - the kids sang:

• Away in the Manger
• Candy Cane Carol
• The Chubby Little Snowman
• Rudolph's Workout (my personal favorite)
• Way Up High on the Christmas Tree (this one was more of a rap, hee hee, with extra points for loudness!)
• Ring Those Bells (complete with bells, of course)
• S-A-N-T-A
• We Wish you a Merry Christmas

I am amazed at how well every kid listened, and how many songs there were!

I don't have great photos. The room was PACKED, and I couldn't see G very well from my seat. And of course, I'm not the most nimble creature in the world right now. Bob was in the front, with the Flip - but of course, he was on the opposite side of the room as G. DOH. I have video, but it needs to be edited. Perhaps sometime in the next couple of days. :-)

Our little star ...



and the entire group of very intent and focused preschoolers!

This is too much fun.

So here's another short video.

This one is called: He's Touching My Toast.



And here is a short "thanks" to Ray & Laura. With a little background noise from G. I'll save his singing debut for later, but let's just say he REALLY likes seeing himself on the video camera. :-)

An experiment ...

I got my Christmas present early this year. Actually, I get my Christmas present early just about every year, because Bob gets excited about the gift and wants to immediately have me open it. But this year, there is a practical purpose to the early giving - it is a Flip Mino video camera. The coolest feature? It plugs directly into the computer. No tapes, no cards. And it is small enough to fit in my purse or coat pocket.

Tonight we let Quinners open her birthday gift from her godparents early (hey Ray and Laura - she loved it!), and I used my Flip to video. Now comes the experiment ... can I get the video to load on my blog?

Thanksgiving 2008 + Noah's birthday

We hosted Thanksgiving here this year, and it also happened to be Noah's birthday. I think this may be the 2nd time his birthday has fallen on the actual day of Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Mom, Dad, Jackie, and Grandma T. made the schlep over to MN for some turkey and stuffing. Bob was super chef. He did the turkey and stuffing all himself. It is a Martha Stewart recipe we've made before, and it was AWESOME. You can check out the recipe here. We skipped the cranberry glaze, though. I made the mashed potatoes (from a box, because those are my favorites) and candied sweet potatoes, plus a pie. The pie was an adventure. Haven't done that since my 4-H days, and the first attempt at the crust was a horrid failure ... for me. But for G, it was very much a good thing. :-) He got to play baker with the failed pie crust and enjoyed every second of it. As a matter of fact, he wants to make a pie tomorrow. Not happening, but I'm glad he enjoyed the experience.



G was also in charge of place mats. He cut out all but 4 of the feathers for the turkeys - that about 30 feathers. My little 3 yr old is a crafty dude! I love this one because the turkey has 3 legs. :-)



This is what the table looked like with G's place mats.




If you've met Miss Quinn, you know she likes to eat. She inhaled a ton of food, then retired to the couch after her meal. And as she ate, she made these crazy piggy noises ... not really slurping but not exactly Emily Post manners. Poor Grandma T. had the pleasure of sitting next to Quinners. If Quinn tried something she didn't like, she'd delicately place the half eaten item on the edge of Grandma's plate. I'm sure Grandma was thrilled. :-)



In addition to pie - and we ended up with 6: 1 homemade, 2 from the grocery store (buy one, get one on Wednesday before Thanksgiving), and 3 that were from Shopko (my family stopped by Shopko on their way to our house from St. Cloud) - Noah requested oreo dessert in lieu of a birthday cake. Mind you, he's never had oreo dessert. But I told him what was in it: oreos, butter, ice cream, hot fudge topping, and cool whip. Sold.



Noah was actually in heaven all day, because he got Lego Batman for the Wii AND we put the Wii in the living room for the day (it is usually in the toy room, attached to the old faulty tv that fritzes out without warning, causing all gaming to end. Not a bad thing for a toy room, but this was a birthday celebration, right?)

The final hours of Thanksgiving were spent playing Rock Band. Ahhhhh. Good times.

Quinn meets chopsticks!

Check out my baby girl! I brought home some Chinese tonight (craving broccolli - mmmmm). I accidentally grabbed an extra set of chopsticks from Leann Chin. Quinn wanted to see them, so I handed the chopsticks over. I fed her a few waterchestnuts with my chopsticks, and then she did this:









I'm impressed. And the best part? She likes Chinese food! She calls broccolli "guacamole" but she eats it. Woohoo!

Awwwwwww.

My "new" lens finally came home. I bought the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 last summer, and just wasn't happy with it. The focus seemed off. So I sent it back for Tamron to fix, and it finally was returned to me this week. I haven't had much time to play with it, but I did get this shot today:



It's so nice when the kids get along.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What does 46 inches look like?

Well, if we are talking pregnant baby bellies, it looks something like this:





I'm 32 weeks along. According to my doctor, the babies would be ok (with some help, of course) if they came now. So we've definitely hit a good milestone.

But I still plan on baking them a few more weeks. :-)

My photography website

Hey, all!

My photography website is up and running. I've decided to go forward with the whole photo biz thing. I was thinking about holding off until after the babies get here, but the photo party was a success (for those of you that don't know, I did a portrait party in SoDak in conjunction with a jewelry party). So I'm going to keep moving forward.

If you know of anyone looking for portraits or photos of their kids/families, I'd love for you to pass on the website info:

jenlessingerphotography.com <--- click this and it will take you to my website. I'm also going to sell Christmas card designs. I have some premade designs loaded on the site now. If you are interested, you can purchase the cards from me. After your order goes through the shopping cart, I'll contact you for the photograph to insert into the card as well as the text. Then I prep the card and have the finished product shipped to your door. No muss, no fuss! I also do custom card designs for a $30 set-up fee (using your photo). If you know of anyone that might be interested, I'd really appreciate you spreading the word! Thanks!

PS: for those of you not on facebook or June's email list, check out this cutie patootie! I took some 2-yr pictures of Turner when he stayed with us last week. My kids are going through Turner withdrawal. Quinn and Griffin have asked me about 25 times: "Where's Turner?"

Better late than never, right?

This is a quick card I made of the kids in their Halloween costumes.

If you are a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or great-grandparent, avert your eyes. You are getting a hard copy in the mail, and I don't want to ruin the surprise. But the rest of you - all 4 of you - enjoy. :-)

Happy Halloween!

We have been celebrating Halloween since September. That's when we got out the decorations.

But we didn't get around to carving pumpkins until last night. Here's how it all went down.

Quinn was interested at first ...



but quickly grew bored with the process and took off to the playhouse.



She also grew tired of paparazzi daddy with the camera and closed up shop for the day.



Griffin tried to clean his pumpkin. His had really thick sides. And when you scoop one seed at a time, it is a bit of a process.



Then G decorated with little pegs (rather than cutting). He LOVED it. I'd poke the peg through the pumpkin, then he'd hammer it in. And every time, he'd say "tap tap tap" as he hammered.



This was the first year that Noah really cleaned his own pumpkin - with minimal complaining, too!



His facial expressions gave him away, dontcha think?






This was also Noah's first year of carving all by himself. First he drew his design.



Then he used a small pumpkin carving knife to cut it out.





He was so meticulous about the process - like my Bean usually is.

Last up: Bob and G carved what was supposed to be Quinn's pumpkin.



And here is the final product: 3 Lessinger jack-o-lanterns, just in time for Halloween.

Working on my studio schtuff ...

And that means I have been dragging my victims ... I mean children ... into the garage for lots of photos during the last 2 days.

Here's one of Miss Quinn and a possible Christmas card type pose.



And the G man (poor kid was happily playing in the backyard, and I bribed his dirty little self to let me test my lights). He's easy to bribe - one pack of smarties and we are set for decent number of photos. :-)



And my big boy. He's a cutie - when I can get him to smile and not give me his impression of Bucky Beaver (totally intentional on his part, by the way).





Here's an example of a technically inferior but still darn cute photo:



And just for fun:

Turner

Last weekend, I took a few photos of Turner. Here are a couple that I liked. He absolutely refused to crack a smile for me - but when Uncle Bob came out and played peekaboo behind me, we had outright laughs! I'm not sure what kind of magical power Bob has over this little guy, but it is pretty cool.





And here's a shot of my big boy. 7 years old. Where does the time go?

This might be what happiness looks like.

Auntie June found a killer deal at the garage sale this weekend, and G was the big beneficiary. 

Do you think he's happy?

More of Miss Quinn ...

This time on blue.

Reasonably cooperative (although the girl will not smile when she sees my camera!) ...



Using her cute "this-gets-me-what-I-want-and-I-want-down" face ...



And losing all patience with me.



It gets easier when you can bribe them with candy.



Can you guess what she's in front of?

Quinners on white.

Same photo, just B&W.



She's wasn't exactly thrilled with my desire to take her picture. Poor kid - I put her on a barstool so she couldn't escape. Bwahahaha.



If she'd just smile at my camera, I'd be so happy.