This was fun

I really just wanted to take some pretty photos of the kids in a picturesque setting. I meant to do it last fall, but you know...never happened. Then the winter decided to stick around forever. Finally we got some welcome warm sunshine and found an evening without any prior obligations (!) so after dinner everyone got polished and combed and off we went. 

All winter I'd been wondering in my subconscious where would be the perfect beautiful setting. Then Julie posted about the commercial Claire shot and I was all, "Where is that?" We went just a little too early in the evening I think, a bit shy of golden hour, but I am satisfied. I have been so thoroughly enjoying learning how to use my camera this past year. I know I've got plenty still to figure out (and lenses to add!), but it's a nice hobby when I have time. 

So, listen, I'm going to go ahead and kind of go nuts with how many shots I'm putting up here, okay? Thank you in advance for your indulgence.

This here is one of my favorites. Look, I even made it the new blog header.

They took plenty of breaks to run around. Lots of cartwheels. Lots of laying in the grass.
Lots of complaining about itchy legs the next day.

In retrospect, Aftons' shirt is really too small for her.
And her pants kept sagging because they are a little too big.
D'oh.

If this were focused better I would really love it.

Love all the spontaneous wrestling that was going on. When we were done none of the kids wanted to go home.
Can I just say that the kids' relationships with one another might be the very best thing about being a parent?

This here is my other favorite. They were pretty much over posing by this point, but Scott made them laugh.
I love that.

Granddaughters

My mom had a very clever idea. She wanted to get some photos taken of her with all of her granddaughters before the oldest heads out to college this summer. (This was easy to arrange since all the girl cousins live in town. There will have to be air travel involved if my dad ever wants to do a big grandson shoot.)
So she called up Brianna (who took these for us last year), and she did a fantastic job. All the girls gathered at Grammy's house and got their smiles on. Check them out. I'm so glad Mom wanted to do this; I love the idea, it seems like a commemoration of sorts of all the fun activities they've done together over the years.

Color Me Wild

Emma's school hosted a 5k color run as a fundraiser for the PTA. Fun! She ran with her friend (and old cross country ally) Caris. Colorful powder covered her hair, invaded her ears, and stained her clothes...but that's the point I suppose. After the race they had lunch and a rock wall for the multi-hued runners.

Did I mention the Costco fieldtrip?

Afton goes to two preschools right now. "Real preschool" (the one that's you know, real) and "friend preschool" (the one we co-op with some cool friends).

Awhile back the friend preschool took a field trip to Costco. When I called to set it up, I told the lady my sister-in-law had lots of good things to say about a Costco field trip they did in Albuquerque. The lady took it as a challenge and made all kinds of promises about how much better ours would be. She must have gotten caught up in the moment, because a lot of the things she mentioned did not come to pass (like $10 memberships for our group), but I'm not here to complain. She did give the kids badges, took us behind the scenes in the bakery, handed out cookies, pushed the kids around on a flat bed cart, and scored us a pizza lunch at the end. We may have to see if Samsclub can step up to the plate next.

(all poorly-lit phone pics, sorry)

And then there was Easter...

On the day before Easter, we were glad to join our good friends the Copelands for a games, dinner, and a hunt.

This glad.

Lots of friends there and lots of space to play around.

Emma holding one of her favorite babysitees.

There were three sack races for three different age brackets. I'm pleased to report a Cruze sweep.

Then Easter Sunday. Church was wonderful, we got to hear three excellent speakers share their thoughts on the significance of the resurrection...one teenage boy, then one young adult who I remember so well when he was a young teenage boy (me=old), concluding with that young adult's mother who I love. Just in case I don't say it often enough...I love church.

It was raining and gray, so the traditional after-church photos had to be taken indoors. Guess what else I love? These kids.

And then there was March...

Another month gone already? That doesn't seem likely, but then wait, here we are: April. Let's see, what did we miss...?

Emma's middle school orchestra was in a county-wide competition where they played two rehearsed songs on stage, then went to a back room and sight-read one song. Guess what? They totally got perfect scores on all three songs and won. Sweet! You can't really see Emma in this photo, but she's third from the end of the row, more or less in the center of the frame. You can just see the top of her head and her black-tighted leg. I considered going right up to the stage to get a better shot, but no one else was doing that, I don't think it was cool.

Emma's not the only one who played basketball. Josh played on a league at the Y and loved it. Right now basketball is the only sport he's really interested in. It was a lot of fun to see his ball-handling and shooting improve over the season.

Yellow-shirted, snarly-faced kid is all, I'm going to block that shot.

Not a chance.

Fourth annual mother-daughter overnight book club. Best tradition ever. This year we stayed at a very frilly, doily-encrusted house in Cookeville and read a way better book than last year.

For two mornings in a row, Lydia filled her pajamas with three large stuffed animals and went around telling everyone about her triplets.

After a blustery, snowy start to our spring break we finally had some weather worth going outside for!

Ben is such a handsome young man...

...until you realize he and his sidekick are going to kill you.

The little girls are not deterred.