The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly--Snippet Form

The Good
-Becca is at an age right now where it is really SO fun to watch her and Lizzy interact together. One of her favorite things to do right now is to come over to Lizzy, yell "Hiiiiiiiii!!!!" and then snuggle her face into Lizzy's and say "Awwwwwwwwww!". This usually occurs right at a crucial point in a TV show that Lizzy is watching, which I could imagine would be really, really frustrating, but so far she's been really patient with Becca about it, which is just the sweetest thing! She is just so sweet right now!

-We cleaned our house. Not just a pick-up-all-the-things clean, which is basically all that has happened for the past few weeks months, but an actual CLEAN clean. Which is amazing, and much much less stressful for me. Because when you find your baby eating popcorn and you have no idea where the popcorn came from or even when the last time that you HAD popcorn was, there's a problem.

-Baseball season is over, woo-hoo!!! This means that Justin has been averaging three nights at home per (work) week, and both the girls and I love having him around. It is *so* nice to be able to sit down and eat dinner at our table without rushing around everywhere. For us to be able to talk for a bit after the kids go to bed. It is just SUCH a blessing.

-A friend and her husband recently purchased a dental practice in town. They asked if I would be interested in doing the photography for the office, and they were hoping for landscapes. Landscapes aren't usually my thing, but I jumped at the chance for several reasons: (a) it gave me a reason to get out the camera in a way that I haven't recently and stretch my proverbial creative legs and (b) we are really so fortunate here in Southern Oregon to have so much beauty right in our backyard, and it has been TOO LONG since we've intentionally spent time at some of these landmark places that people drive for hours and days to see. It's been a lot of fun to take some time to go visit with our little family. There's one shot in particular that I just love, and so I added some text. The text won't work for the dental practice, but will be perfect in the new gallery wall around the TV that I have planned out in my head :)


The Bad
-It has been majorly raining lately, which is starting to cramp my photo style! In fact, not too far away, there has already been SNOW, which is just ridiculous. Knock it off please, weather! I have photo shoots to do!

-I'm in a book slump again. I'm reading Tina Fey's Bossypants...finally...no thanks to the library, where I am still on the waiting list and have been since it was released. Library fail. Anyway, I really like Bossypants and I think Tina Fey is hilarious, but it isn't the type of book (i.e. fiction) that you can really lose yourself in, you know?

The Ugly
-Now that Lizzy has started school, we've been trying to make sure that she goes to be between 7pm-8pm most nights, but especially the nights before school. This means that one night a week, I've been staying home with the girls while Justin goes to band practice. While I'm technically a "member" of the band so far as the business side of things is concerned, it doesn't feel like it right now since I'm never there, which is a bummer. I mean, I know I don't need to be at the practices since I don't actually play music or sing. I get that--I'm not a "member" in the same sense that the other people are members. But I used to really enjoy going to practices even when I didn't need to be there, because hello...the band is made up of all our friends and family members. I enjoy listening to them. I enjoy hanging out with them...but now I don't get to do that, because I'm at home. Sometimes it feels like I'm always at home. I mean, I'm able to meet with friends and have playdates during the day and that's awesome. It's a blessing. But that being said, when I see a fun video of everyone goofing around and having fun be posted to Facebook, or when you hear what's clearly an inside joke that you aren't privy to, it's hard not to feel a little like Mindy Kaling-- everyone is hanging out without me. And that in turn can so easily turn into a bitterness that I'm really trying to manage and avoid right now!

It is well with my soul, right? Now you know why I post that kind of thing in my home--because I need the reminder sometimes on a minute-by-minute basis!