Tag Archives: photo365
Sunday
We spent the day celebrating Christmas with Aaron’s family. Unfortunately, we missed last week when all of his siblings were there, so it was just his parents and brother.
It’s a long drive to their house. Which apparently means I take selfies with Reed and my dogs.
I’m super cool.
Lena and Gus have bucket seats next to each other. I tickled Gus’s feet for awhile, but he wanted more, more, more and I quit. Someone else took over.
And this adorable thing happened.
This makes me happy. In the midst of people and many toys, I found her with her nose in a book. I can’t imagine how much more she’ll enjoy books when she can read all of the words.
Lena just adores her Uncle Micah.
Presents were opened. Lots of presents. Including envelopes which probably seems odd, but I promise you, Reed and Lena will use them up fast. And maybe we can even use some of them to write thank you notes!
I went out for a brief walk with my dogs, and saw several cardinals. I love their bold color against the starkness of winter.
And my dogs are ridiculous. Ridiculous.
An Elk in Kansas
Aaron had to work this morning, but I wanted to do SOMETHING today. It was a bit warmer and a good day to go somewhere. I love Kansas for its wide open spaces and general tranquility, but it does seem to lack tourist attractions. Unless you want to visit the Agriculture Hall of Fame, the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, or the Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States.
I settled on the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge, a bit of a drive, but we’ve never been there before and it has both bison and elk. Aaron and I have seen both in the wild several times at various National Parks, but our kids haven’t. In fact, the only National Park they’ve been to so far is our trip to Great Sand Dunes back in August. We probably should fix that soon.
The start of our trip. Reed told me that he wants a camera like mine. I explained that it’s something that could easily be broken or damaged by little hands. But, he can start learning and handed him the camera manual.
This quickly happened. Gus took the best nap he’s taken since he moved to a big boy bed. Score!
Unfortunately, we missed out on the tours, as it was so late in the day. We could see both a herd of bison and a heard of Elk in the distance.
We decided to drive around, hoping that we’d see something. And we spotted these guys.
We drove around a bit more, and unfortunately, the only additional wildlife we saw was some geese.
On our long drive home, we stopped for some Barbecue. It was on my bucket list of things that we needed to do with Andrei. Have I told you that Gus is in this adorable phase where he comes up to me often and says “I want a hug, please”? He’s started doing it with Lena, too.
He just presses his little body into hers. And, I love her reaction.
My Ukrainian Girl
When Andrei saw us taking photos on Monday, he told me that for a welcome, bread is presented on the rushnyk. I googled it and I found some interesting photos.
(source)
So, I wanted to try this with Lena. We don’t have any of this traditional Ukrainian attire and I didn’t feel like trying the incredible ornate bread, but we did our best and we had fun.
And the outtakes…
Reed came out and helped me for a bit. Then, it turned into a silly “what does this bread smell like?”
I told them that we weren’t going to eat the bread, after it had been touched and sniffed, so if they wanted a nibble, go for it. which turned into this…
This girl is just so sassy. Aaron was taking them to the playground, and this is how she dressed and announced that she was ready.
Real Things
A friend asked how my Christmas was today, and I told her– it was pretty good. Moments of fun and moments of “WE’RE NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN!” She told me that she’d never know it by my blog– that I seem like the “world’s best mom”.
You guys. I don’t want to be THAT person. The one who puts on a show of perfection. Wonder mom who seems to do all things.
I’m not. I have my strengths as a mom, but I also have tons of weaknesses.
1. Something that I left out from Christmas Day?
I showed my kids the following adorable Christmas video.
Afterwards, I asked them who that was all about and Reed said “Moses?”
2. My cabinets are a HUGE disaster.
If you look closely, you will notice not only the mess, but also evidence of my chocolate covered pretzel addiction. I regularly sneak candy behind my kids’ backs.
3. My floor desperately needs to be vacuumed and mopped. Ugh.
4. That Advent calendar. Yup, I rocked it.
Here was December 8th’s card.
We did it. And here are the canned goods on 12/27.
… by our back door. And I took a can of beans out last week for dinner.
5. I adore my sweet dogs, but they leave a huge mess everywhere around them. Nose prints, much?
If you are still under some illusion about me being the “world’s best mom”, just ask my kids. Although I actually did, and Lena told me that she just wants me to not correct her ever. And Reed wants me to stop dragging him to the dog park. But, there’s a lot more than I wish I could change about myself and more I’m sure they’d say if they understood what I was getting at. I lose my temper and yell or speak harshly. I regularly (as in, almost always) skip class parties. I’ve never volunteered for anything at school. We almost never have friends over to our house, which I know Reed would certainly like me to change. We are late to school at least once a week, sometimes every day. And I am a couple of minutes late to pick them up almost every day. Doing homework with my kids sends me into fits of frustration. I only share the fun stuff on here (usually), but there are lots of days where my kids watch too much TV while I sneak chocolate and don’t do anything productive. It’s true.
I’d love to do better at those things, and a lot more. But, I’m learning to not feel bad for what I cannot do and learning to not feel guilty about what is in the past. My friend Bethany shared the article, Parent Guilt – A Silent Epidemic, in my first Imperfect Friday post and I really enjoyed that. My friend Jill(who is fabulous and looks gorgeous even right out of bed, so obviously she doesn’t have any self doubt whatsoever) wrote this post, Why I Don’t Suffer Mama Guilt, which is also awesome. I’m sure I’ve read more great articles on perfect and mom guilt recently, but I’m currently suffering from another common parenting epidemic– mom brain.
Whew, anyways, I have some more photos to share with you today– and I promise they are not of my dirty house this time, so I will be back later!
a moose in moscow 