Pictures

I know I shouldn't cover up my announcement from the last post so soon, but that ugly clothes boxes picture was bugging me.

Speaking of pictures, ugly or not, I read a great idea a while back on a blog. The idea is to take a picture of your whole family once a month and write a little bit about that month. I haven't done that exactly. I don't write about each month, and I don't necessarily take one each month. But it did get me thinking about pictures of my whole family. Most of my pictures are of the kids - alone, together, with one parent. But we hardly ever got around to taking one of the whole family (besides "family picture time"). So we ordered this tiny tripod that fits in our camera case, and voila, we can take family pictures wherever.

Easter Morning (actually the day before Easter).  This one is a little bit sad because no kidding we should take a family picture on Easter morning.  But I don't think we ever had before.  If you don't have Easter morning pictures of your family, either, maybe this is a good goal for you, too. ;)

In front of our house.  I love these kind of pictures.  Everyone needs a picture in front of their house.  We've lived in so many places, and I hardly remember what any of them looked like - not that you can really tell from this picture what it looks like.  Maybe we'll try again later.

Camping.  Most of our family pictures are while camping or hiking.  

This is my all-time favorite family picture.  It was taken last year, before I had this picture goal, by my friend Courtney, who sat behind us as we watched fireworks (on the beach - will never beat that 4th of July).  I didn't even know she took the picture, but I was so happy when she gave it to me.  

At the pool.  

So I was thinking about the family pictures as we were swimming tonight, and I wished I could do something more creative/artistic with them.  Someday, I will learn to use my camera.  But in the meantime, (since I have a hard time even getting dinner made on time), I'll just try something new every now and then.  I watched our reflection in Jason's glasses, and decided that was a fun way to capture my whole family. 

I love this picture goal.  It's fun and worthwhile.  My only complaint is that our camera only has a tripod hole on the bottom, so I can only take tripod pictures landscape.  Do they make tripod holes on the sides of cameras?

Our collection of boy clothes and girl clothes

I'm so glad there are only two genders in the world so I don't have to worry about collecting any more boxes.

Yes this is an announcement
Yes I am excited
Yes I am tired
Yes I hope we have a house by then
Yes I'm back to eating ramen noodles and corn dogs (being haunted by my ghost of junk-food past)

So there you have it.  I seriously can't believe I'm about to be a mom to 3 kids.  I think this means I will officially be a mom.  Not that a mom of one or two isn't a mom, but now I will be a mom to the world.  You know, a mom you can spot from anywhere, even if she doesn't have her kids with her; when you see her the first word that pops into your head is "mom."  As weird as it seems, though, to be a mom to 3, I hope to have many more children.  I'm praying that the angel shows up sometime, the one Jason says he needs to see in order to have more than 4. 

And for those of you blog-skimmers who don't like to read details:
We are having a baby this winter!

Almost a CPA

 Louis: Who are you guys?

Ray: We're the Ghostbusters

Louis: Who does your taxes?

(BTW Jason is in audit, not tax.  But we watched this movie on Halloween, and it was so much funnier to me now actually being married to an accountant).

Life has a funny way of teaching us what we need to learn.  I think one of my biggest problems (besides that I'm scatterbrained all the time) is that I'm opinionated and bossy.  I didn't even realize I was like this (very much) until after we were married.  I actually tried to talk Jason out of being an accountant several times.  I told him to be a dentist, like my dad, and only work 4 days a week.  Accountants work too much, don-cha-know?  Well, I am so grateful to be married to Jason.  He puts up with me, but doesn't listen to me (he he).  He became an accountant anyway, and now I am so very grateful.  He has a JOB, a stable job in this wacky economy.  And he comes home from work every day HAPPY.  And busy season, at least this year, actually wasn't too bad for him (except that he was also studying for 3 of the CPA exams after work - that was crazy).

We just found out that he has officially passed all the CPA exams, and is now almost a CPA.  All he needs to do now is wait, I mean work.  He needs a year's work experience, so he should be an official CPA this fall. 

He took his 3rd (of 4) tests on April 1.  I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to play a prank on him.  I made this "cake" out of (vegetarian) meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  I told him it was his congratulations for taking his test (kind of mean, now that I think of it).  It was such a funny prank, because he was falling for it forever.  I even had the video camera out and was singing "for he's a jolly good fellow," and he was just smiling and thanking me for making cake for dinner.  He even cut it up, and started scooping it out. I was laughing my guts out and he was still clueless as to why.  It wasn't until the meatloaf plopped down, at 3x the weight cake should be, onto the table, that he realized it was a fraud.  (The OJ was jello). 

Saving time on blogging

The moose we saw while camping.  Has nothing to do with the post, but I wanted to add a picture.  

After I wrote that last post, I did something my friend recommended that I've been wanting to do for a long time.  I deleted my blog roll.  I added everyone into my bookmarks, but I don't have a clue when anyone updates.  So it's only been a few weeks since I did this, but I love it.  I think the computer is pretty creepy, actually.  I'm not an addictive personality.  I don't text very much, watch any TV, play any video games.  But that darn computer is really really weird.  I felt like I had to check it every day.  And I knew I didn't, but I did it anyway, out of habit.  I'd get on in the morning, if there was a new post, I checked it.  I tried to not do this, to time myself, but something about knowing there's a new post, for some reason I just had to click on it...

Does this sound like anyone besides me?  It creeps me out that I can be like that.  So now, when I'm thinking about a friend, I'll hop on their blog.  That's how it should be, anyway.  I don't call friends every day for an update.  I guess I'm just trying to make my internet connections mimic real life, to make them more natural and less addicting.  

So there you have it, a way to save time, if you're looking for one.  Another thing I've loved is turning off comments.  Not that I didn't like comments.  I really did.  But I hated the fact that I wanted comments.  That's all. HTH someone.

My blog has become a whole lot of nothing

 Enjoying real life with my family at the mall.

I get pretty disillusioned with blogging sometimes.  When I first started I was super gung-ho.  I mean REALLY gung-ho.  I started under pressure from friends, and quickly found it was an easy way to document my family's happenings that I could even print off.

Then last summer I felt weird about blogging and the computer in general.  I cut my time to an hour a day on the computer, for anything at all on the computer.  That still sounds like a lot, but it was pretty hard to fit the things in that I needed to.  I kept a running list of things to look up on a piece of paper, so when my hour was on, I could go to town (mostly reading about nutrition, I'm a little obsessed).  But it freed me up so much.  Immediately I saw a difference in my self, my happiness, and my parenting.  That lasted a few months.  Then it wore off (you know, I need to just hop on for this or that).  And I'm back to being discontent.

So I tried to simplify my blog.  But I think it's become boring.  I don't say anything important. Now I'm trying to figure out what I am doing blogging anyway.  It's not my record-keeper anymore.  What should I blog about?  I always blogged about my kids in the past.  That's great for grandmas and occasionally for the crowd.  Why do I have a blog?  Sure seems like blogging in one way or another (reading others' blogs or posting on my own) takes up a lot of time.  Is it worth it?

I know some of you have these feelings.  I'm just trying to sort them out.  Because in some ways, I think my life was better, I was happier, my kids were happier, before I started blogging.

Amish buggy driver in Lancaster County.  I think about the Amish a lot, ever since seeing them in '08.  I think they have a lot of things right.  Sometimes I wish I could live that life.  They don't blog.

But then, I've learned a ton.  Like a TON TON from blogs.  Even if I stopped blogging, I don't think I could break my sneak peak addiction at DesignSponge. 

Look, I just totally wasted YOUR time by posting this.  Sorry. ;)

Facebook

I just wanted everyone to know that the end of the world has come.  JASON JOINED FACEBOOK!!!  It surprised me, actually because neither of us wanted to facebook, but a lady from his mission invited him, so he succumbed.  Anyway, we share an email account, and I wanted to let you all know that I am not facebooking at all (don't know how, don't want to :)  Just wanted to clarify that because I've already had several people want to be my fb friend, and I don't want you to be offended if it's denied (I'm not sure how Jason is working it anyway).

Why don't I want to facebook?  I just think it's weird and time consuming.  You are welcome to send me emails to try and talk me into it, but I doubt you'll be able to :)

Still love you all,
Erin

*Update:  So apparently Jason still doesn't care about facebook, and doesn't have plans to post anything.  He just wanted to get on and see this lady's pictures.  Ha ha.  You know, I am really glad for that.

Happy Mother's Day

Today after church we went outside and discovered a Killdeer bird who had layed eggs within the decorative rocks on the church property.  We walked semi-close to the bird and eggs.  The bird, standing 2 feet in front of her eggs, squawked at us for the entire 5 min. we sat watching.  Her feathers were out, and she was threateningly mad.  I decided that since it was Mother's Day, it wasn't nice to stress this little mother bird out like that, so we walked away.  I know that this is a common thing in nature, but it was really sweet to see on Mother's Day.  I love how she, in the face of these giant humans, who could easily squash her if we wanted to, braved up to protect her little ones.  Motherhood brings innate responsibility and love, and I am so grateful I am privileged enough to be a mother.

That's all.