Week Five, Six, Seven

It's been so long I can't even remember what week I should be on. Blogging/picturing my year week by week is my 2013 resolution. Knowing I would not be 100% successful I allowed with that goal some slack - so, in reality - I'm doing really great!  With that being said, let me see if I can picture the last few weeks for you.

Week Five

This is Ally's current stack of sleep necessities. She notices when any of them are missing and will pout until they are retrieved, or a promise of retrieval is given. Luckily, if we can't find one, all I need to do is explain that we'll have to find it tomorrow and she's ok. No sleep lost. Phew. She is also ok to put MOST these aside if she is sleeping with Jane. Yes, they have taken to sleeping together in Jane's little crib size bed. It is quite cute, but she must have her pillow, puppy and one blanket. It makes for crowded sleeping quarters.

This was also the week of the great snow ball fight. The neighbor kids ganged up on each other and had some pretty sweet hits. They tried to gang up on me but quickly learned that with some expensive camera equipment in my hand, such thing was not going to happen. See Jane hunched over? That's her definition of defense.

 But what you should have seen, and what I should have caught on video was the neighbor kids attack on Rich when he got home for work. I am not kidding, it was like a scene from the movies. There were 6 kids all throwing snow balls and jumping on him and he defended off each snow ball and child with amazing talent! He blocked snow balls with one hand and threw kids into the snow with the other, and kick boxed with his feet at the same time, for - seriously, 3 full minutes! In his work clothes! I think he may be a secret superhero, it was really incredible. I had already put my camera away by then. I still regret it.

I also had the privileged of photographing a tiny baby this week. He was really stinky and pooped on my blankets 3 times and peed twice, once on me. Other then that, the shoot went well! ;)

Week Six

This week I had my camera on flowers a lot. I am in the midst of stocking my Etsy shop with lots of gorgeous blooms. Here's one of my new favorites.

Week Seven

I don't decorate for any holiday except Christmas. I am such a bahumbug. I don't even think Valentine's Day IS technically a holiday. Not even the bankers get it off. But, we do try to have a nice dinner somewhere or have a special date of some sort and I do try to get the chocolates that go on sale the day after. This year, we "celebrated" v-day with the girls on the 13th, because we had a special date night planned for the 14th. During the day the girls and I wrote "love notes" on paper hearts and hid them around the house for Rich to find. In the evening, Rich sent a text saying he was on his way home from work, so without Rich knowing what was waiting him, we lit the candles (the girls thought this was super cool), finished preparing his favorite dinner (pizza) and waited. In the dark. The girls thought the best surprise would be for daddy to walk through the front door to a glowing dinner in the kitchen. The sad part is.....without us knowing, he had to make a few stops on his way home from work. So.... finally after much too long the girls got hungry and we enjoyed the candlelit dinner by ourselves. It really is quite comical. I finally called Rich to see where he was to get a better gauge of timing. In the end, Rich still entered a dark house, found a candlelit dinner and enjoyed some pizza. Even if it was cold. He was surprised, but the girls were even more surprised when we turned on the lights and found a fist full of love-ly balloons and a single red rose. I guess those couple stops were worth the wait. :)

But wait, it gets better! One the morning of Valentines Day Rich decked out the table with the balloons, Valentines treats, genuine valentine cards and "princess" party hats for each of his girls. I do have to mention mine was corrected to "Queen" with permanent black marker. Treats for breakfast? The girls were in high-heaven!

 Ally has some pretty awesome Witch hair in the mornings.

That evening Rich came home with a bouquet of the prettiest red tipped yellow roses. We got a sitter and headed to the American Heritage Center for dinner catered by Elements, followed by a "magic" show.

Ok, seriously, this post has taken me 2 hours to write and my kids have had enough of me being on the computer. I'll have to catch up later! :)