Then and Now: 5 Years- Some Pancakes and a Stink and Triggers

So, a few months back we went to the Caldwell Zoo with Lisa and Jack.  (We won’t talk about all the problems with the truck that followed that trip!).  While there I “manufactured” a shot to compare Jack then and now.  I knew I wanted a similar shot of him, so I helped myself with a little gentle push of Jack.

I thought I’d share those two pics today now that I’m starting to catch up on a back log of pics that I have for editing.  (New Computer= Freeing Lightroom with some Speed!- Sorry got geeky there, didn’t I.)  As I looked at them I noticed that I also had then and now shots from the same two visits in our kitchen.

It’s amazing to me how much this kid has grown in such a short time, but then again, part of me can’t believe it’s only been five years since the 2005 shots.  Was he really that little then?  It won’t be much longer and he’ll be taller than me. . . and really not that much longer than he’s taller that Cody. . . or at least I expect he’ll get that tall.

Ok. . . Comparison #1- In with the Rhinos where it definitely stinks.  I couldn’t quite get him to make the same expression. . . .

Summer 2005:

Summer 2010

;

A side note that I find interesting: The difference in his size and my camera is fairly obvious.  But what’s not as obvious is the similarities in his shirts.  The first shirt, a humorous look at 10 things not to say on a road trip, is from a trip he took with his Nana and Papa.  The second shirt is from the trip we took with him last year. 

Comparison #2- While #1 is somewhat staged, this one certainly isn’t.  It’s something that happens everytime Jack comes up.  In fact, it even happens at the deer lease and finally happened just last week when we were at his house.

Summer 2005

Summer 2010

Back then of course, we helped him make the pancakes.  These days we just sit in the living room demanding he cook us breakfast. . . not that he isn’t a willing participant or that if he wanted us to come in there we would.  But, he can make them from start to finish on his own now- all those early mornings of getting up to help him fix pancakes are paying off now- I can be lazy now.

Comparison #3. . . so while typing this, I realized I had yet another pair of then and now shots from these two visits.  While the others show progression in size and cooking abilities, this one shows a whole other progression- one that I’m sure Uncle Cody is super proud of and one that Jack is more than happy to make. 

Summer 2005

Summer 2010

Cody had promised that Jack would get to shoot the pistols next time he came up, so they had to squeeze a little time in this trip to do so.  Jack posted one of the pics from shooting pistols on his facebook and his comment says it all “I love that gun”

Another interesting to me side note: Back then, we had introduced Jack to Johnny Horton music (is there any better road music at that age?) and so the coke cans he was shooting became the “Bloody British”.  Just last week, Cody said that a Johnny Horton song came on the TV while he was down there and Jack started singing it.

Agree to Disagree: Major Arguement #2

I suppose it’s official.  Cody and I will just have to agree to disagree. . . . like we finally settled the Pete Rose argument- just agreeing to disagree.

We’ve always disagreed on this matter but lately it seems we’ve spent more time discussing.  It all started about a month ago when Cody was offering to fix me something for breakfast when I didn’t feel good.   He definetely said the wrong thing . . . . Grilled Cheese.  Why would you offer to make Grilled Cheese for breakfast?

Grilled Cheese is a lunch or, by extension, dinner food. . . But never a breakfast food.  He must be totally crazy.  But, his take is that it’s breakfast food and that we eat it for other meals just like we might eggs or pancakes.  I beg to differ on this point.  Or that perhaps we eat lunch for breakfast like we do breakfast for dinner.  I cannot and will not agree with him.  Grilled Cheese is not for breakfast.

The truth is just the thought of the lunch food for breakfast just turns my stomach.  I tried to explain it to him- imagine having meatloaf for breakfast or spaghetti or pot roast.  It just doesn’t sound good, does it?  So that same goes with grilled cheese for breakfast.

Cody’s perfectly happy with Grilled Cheese for breakfast.  I’d like to know who tricked him into believing that Grilled Cheese was breakfast food.  I’d have to assume it was either his mom or dad. . . I need to have a talk with his mom to see whose to blame for their son’s errant way of thinking.

So, we’ve had this debate.  We’ve asked our friends what they thought. . . Still nothing has settled the argument.  We’ve agreed that we’ll just have to disagree. . . . But, of course, I still hold out hope I’ll win him over to my side of the arguement such as in the case of Pete Rose.  Until then, I’m perfectly happy to make him Grilled Cheese for breakfast (I’ll admit it’s super easy and he does like it that way) but please, don’t ask me if I want Grilled Cheese for breakfast again!

(A Short Aside- I think he fixed eggs for breakfast that morning, but then he fixed me a grilled cheese for dinner- with some leftover bacon we had cooked up.  It was totally delicious.)

2010 A Week in the Life- Saturday, April 24th

2010 A Week in the Life- Friday, April 23

2010 A Week in the Life- Thursday, April 22

2010 A Week in the Life- Wednesday, April 21

Here’s my pages for Wednesday:

2010 A Week in the Life- Tuesday, April 20

Tuesdays!  I love Tuesdays!  That’s date night.  We earmark Tuesday nights for us time- watching TV together in the chair.  Most often, it’s the one night with very little to no sports on the television.  NCIS had their season finale last week, so now, we’re minus a couple of shows.  But, Deadliest Catch is still going on.  So, we’ll watch that and I’m sure the hockey playoffs and Royals baseball will be in the picture as summer moves along. 

A Week in the Life- Monday, April 19

I finished my Week in the Life pages!  Now to get them uploaded and printed.  I just love this first picture.  Cody was letting me to his office after I walked next door.  That’s been a big transition for us.  When he drops me off, I have to remember he’s not going to just go park but rather, he has to go around the corner.  And in the afternoons, I have to wait for him to come and pick me up.  Thankfully, when we’re both in town, we still get to eat lunch together although our time together is a bit shorter. 

Oh and I haven’t been on the treadmill in weeks. .  .  shame on me.

2010 A Week in the Life: Sunday April 18

Sunday was a pretty typical day- except that I got to wear sweats again!  It was all pretty normal.  Hockey is of course winding down.  SFA baseball played their last games of the season just this week at the Southland Conference.  We actually went to games two weekends this month- including all three games of the last homestand. . . where we had a really great conversations with one of the scouts at the game.

My Plans This Week

I’ve barely been here, I know.  I’ve been rocking and rolling but unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to blog.  Tomorrow is the last day of the Layout A Day Challenge that I took on this month.  Probably not the best challenge to take on when getting ready to do A Week in the Life and then when your husband changes jobs.  But, I’ve gotten a lot of stories told through my scrapbook pages.  I plan to share those soon!  I’ll try to upload them all after I complete tomorrow’s layout.  Tuesday, it’s on to another project and challenge for me. . . 25 Days of Templates over at Renee Pearson.  More scrapbooking!  More story telling!  I also need to update my 365 pics. 

Speaking of projects, I haven’t yet finished my Week in the Life project.  I’m down to the journaling and hope to get it all finished up tomorrow.  I’m going to post each day’s layouts this week.  I think that as I do, I might give some updates on things that have changed this month etc. 

And then, I hope to do some more blogging and sharing!

Jack Plays Basketball and About Winning

What a busy month so far.  With Cody taking on his new job, travel for his job, travel for my job- it’s been busy.  And I decided to do a Layout-A-Day Challenge this month.  But there have been some really great times this month as well.  Like seeing Jack play basketball Tuesday night.  It was most definetely worth the travel and it messing up our NCIS date night.

His team had been undefeated until Tuesday when they lost to their league’s other undefeated team.  Jack impressed me with both his speed and his persistence throughout the game.  We talked a lot about the game over Pizza Tuesday night.  Cody stayed behind and spent yesterday afternoon doing sports stuff with Jack.  When he got home tonight we talked more about Jack and what seems to be a natural ability to learn and play sports.  So, it’s only natural that when I sat down to create my layout today,  Jack was fresh on the brain.

Journaling Reads: Winning, Losing, and Performance. It was the theme of our dinner conversation Tuesday after you lost your basketball game. No one likes to lose a game, I know. When we asked about whether you had fun, you said that the football coaches you’d seen earlier in the day said it wasn’t about fun, it was about winning.  As Cody and I were talking about how well you could do in sports today, we talked about how much I wanted you to learn about winning.  Some say winning isn’t everything- some say it’s the only thing.  I lean towards it being the only thing. Only it’s not the win ming “the game” that is the only thing. I want you to learn and know that there’s more one way to measure winning or success. You win when you give it you all. You win when you give have fun. You win when you’re a great teammate and show great character.  Do you remember when David DeJesus got the triple in the 9th inning as the Royals were losing badly?  He had a smile on his face as he signed your baseball.  He knew that you can measure winning in more than one way- he hadn’t given up.  I heard Mitch Maeir talking about it just yesterday- you have to learn to control what you can control and let go of the rest.  You possess their winning traits- you give it your all and you’re always learning to be better- it’s what makes you so good.  Sure, playing sports isn’t all fun, and I want you to learn to work hard.  Losing the game is certainly not easy to take.  But, you have to look in  your heart not at the scoreboard- if you know you did the best you could do and you took some joy from the game, you’ve already won.

Kitchen Discontent: Some New Recipes

For whatever reason, I haven’t been content to make the same old things in the kitchen at night for dinner.  I’ve been trying a number of new recipes and have enjoyed most of them.  Here’s a few examples:

I picked up a cookbook with Campbell’s Soup recipes which included these:

Each Chicken & Cheese Enchiladas (We both thought it needed a little less of the creamy sauce)

Creamy Ranch Pork Chops and Rice (We fell in love with this one)

Another great source of recipes that I love is Kraft Foods.  I subscribe to their Food & Family Magazine and look forward to each issue.

When I got my iphone last month, I downloaded “ifood” which is from Kraft Foods.  Some of the recipes we’ve tried from there include:

Foil Pack Chicken Fajita Dinner

Gotta Empanadas Of course, I made this with homemade pie crust.

Southwest Chicken Salad Panini

Taco Bake

Mexican Style Lasagna

We’ll probably grill tonight but I wonder what we’ll have tomorrow.

A Week in Our Life: This Week, Our Week

As I said, I’m really interested in documenting our everyday life.  And this week, I’m going to concentrate on documenting our life.  I’ve read about this project before on Ali’s Blog but this year seems like the perfect time. 

It’s also a good week to do it.  I really want to capture what life is like now before Cody starts his new job in two weeks.  Things are sure to change- our morning, lunch, and after work routines will change at least some.  He won’t be next door anymore but around the corner.  But lots of things will change over time- our appliances, prices, etc and that part of this project really appeals to the historian in me.

I’ll work on capturing today all week.  I’ve already noticed that I’m finding gratitude in the little things.  I expect that this project will really help me appreciate our every day normal life.   Today’s introit at church talked about meditating on God’s wondrous works.  I think about Mr. Haas and how he talks about the marvel in each breath we take.  I’m welcoming this opportunity take time to think of all the wonderful things in our lives- the little things we often overlook.

It’s fun to think about all the things I want to document and how to do it.  I’ve already noticed though that I’m seeing things I hadn’t thought of that are just a part of everyday life- like being able to see Cody shave while I put on my make-up.

You can read so much more about this project here.

Telling My Story

I haven’t blogged much lately but I have been working to tell my story.  I’ve been scrapbooking quite a bit and thinking about scrapbooking even more.

Story.  Vision.  It’s something I’ve been reflecting on a lot this year.  I suppose it really started last year when I read “Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision” by David DeChumin.  I highly recommend this book to photographer and scrapbookers alike.  It really made me think about what I want to capture in my own life- through words, photography, and scrapbooking.  What is your vision? how can you communicate what you see?  Not so much vision as in some grand thing- but your vision of the moment, what is it you want to capture, what is it that evokes emotion in you. . . How can you convey that to others?   In the book, he talks alot about how a powerful image needs to evoke emotion and that it takes more to evoke emotion with other people than just when you see your image- you have the reference of having been there.  He also talks about capturing the broad and the detail.  As I started scrapbooking again this year, I can’t help but think about how much of that carries over to the scrapbook page. 

Part of sharing a vision or any story is “why”.  After I started Library of Memories, I wrote about “Why” on the forums of my Design Your Life Class (both classes are at Big Picture Scrapbooking).  It was in response to a question about journaling the who, what, when, where on scrapbook layouts and was inspired by an assigment in LOM where we idientified the 5 W’s in our layouts.  Here’s what I wrote about “Why”:

There are 5 W’s and you left out the really meaningful one- WHY!

What about the connections you see if the photos or the events?  To the one you are scrapbooking or perhaps a different time.  Why was it a good time?  Why did you go there? Why is the one W that really doesn’t fit in a title or on an embellishment.  It’s the one that really talks about your mark in this world and your history.  It’s the one that truly gives insightful info about the people or the event in the picture.  And that’s just skimming the surfaces with why’s.

My project 365 has been another huge inspiration this year.  I find it really makes you look at life as if you are the reporter. . . and for me now it’s about sharing my vision of our life.

Then, when I got my new Iphone (Oh I haven’t even told you all that Cody and I both now have Iphones), I started listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable Podcasts and have found several of them to be true gems.  One of which was Episode 3, “Ali Edwards on Story”.  After listening to that podcast, I picked up the book StoryTellers which I’ve started reading in little bits.

Here’s a few of the layouts I’ve created lately- capturing our story.  my story.

PS after I recover from computer issues, I hope to get more of my scrapbook layouts uploaded along with updating my 365 pictures.

Turkey Lurkey Do and Turkey Lurkey Die

Ok, I’m going to ruin this story. . . so that I can warn anyone who may not want to see a dead turkey, you might want to skip the last image in this post.  It’s the fourth picture- just the quintessential over the shoulder picture)

Since, you can tell where this story is going, Turkey Season began on April 1st and ended, for us, on April 3rd.  Even though it was super short, it has been one of the best!  We’ve turkey hunted now for at least five years without much of a clue what we’re doing and no “success”.  But, are totally hooked!

Cody hooked up with a Turkey Expert named David.  A week before the season started, they went out to the deer lease and scouted.  Cody came back more excited than ever for Turkey Season to begin and shared with me all sorts of things he learned.  He made arrangements to meet David at the deer lease Thursday and Friday to call turkeys, show us the ropes, etc. 

Wednesday evening as we headed to the deer lease, David called to see if we were going to go out the deer lease to “Put a Turkey to Bed”. . . Once he explained what he meant, we did.  I snapped this picture of Cody and I hanging out on the tailgate listening for roosting turkeys with my iphone.

My iphone was the only thing I took with me hunting the next couple of days though I didn’t take any shots of us hunting because I didn’t want to move and mess anyone up.  We walked a lot, we learned a lot.  We started at six in the morning and didn’t stop until early afternoon. 

Thursday, we had the amazing experience of watching a hen walk less than 12 feet in front of us down the road while we weren’t in any sort of cover.  The hen just walked right on by as David talked to her.  She walke dby David, myself, and Cody, then into the woods about 10 feet away from Cody.  Too Super Cool!

We met another new Turkey hunter as we caught up with Scottie just after the hen experience.  (I grabbed my good camera which was in the truck to capture this image while sitting in the truck).

Despite being super tired and hot, the two experiences together along with all that we were learning, made us so thankful we get to do things like Turkey Hunting.  Thursday night, we went back out to “Put a Bird to Bed” though it was really to windy.  It was a beautiful night and as the sun went down the stars came out in all their beauty.

Friday was windy and we didn’t hear a turkey all day!  But, that didn’t mean the learning stopped.  Just an amazing couple of days.  You know, folks learn to deer hunt from other folks and I think the same is true of Turkey Hunting which, at least around here, is much more difficult.  (Cody and I both recognize the value of leanring more about our hobbies)

Saturday, we went out with Chris and set out to use the knowledge we’d gained.  After locating some turkeys with our new owl call, we set up.  Chris began calling and sure enough, here came a turkey- the turkey would become Cody’s first.

So, now, officially Cody’s turkey season is over- he can only get one in our one month season.  I think we’ll probably go back out there later just to keep learning and gaining experience though.  Today on the way home I had to laugh when Cody said that all the talk of his turkey season being over made him start putting May on things instead of April.