So nice to see you guys.

Halloween

This first set of pictures is from Family Pumpkin Carving night at Haleigh’s school.  We were impressed…she actually pulled the guts out by herself and she actually didn’t want anyone to help her.  She drew the face onto the pumpkin and we carved it out just as she had drawn it. James helped a little too…he enjoyed putting the pieces back in as if it were a puzzle.  At the end everyone lit their pumpkins and we walked around to look at everyone’s creativity. 

 

The boys look like twins.  The funny thing as these were not bought at the same time or with any intention of being so much a like.  The boys each picked out their costumes, on their own, on completely separate occasions.  It’s a good thing they had such warm costumes because it was cold, rainy, and windy here!  But they had a blast despite the conditions.  They were so cute. All of them roaring their own roars and bee bopping around.  Scott and Chris took them out trick or treating while Jamie and I bundled up in the garage to hand out candy. 

The weather didn’t hold people back as much as we thought.  We still had lots of kids running around the hood too. 

Afterwards, the kids came in to eat and watch The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown…and ate a couple pieces of candy too.  It was a great night. 

Chris and I dressed up…Chris the scarecrow and me the vampire! We had fun. 

 

Snowby and James.

Sleeping buddies.

Keeping mom in the pictures

A friend of mine recommended this article on Facebook. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-tate/mom-pictures-with-kids_b_1926073.html (the full article if you click on the link above) but a copy and pasted version here:

The Mom Stays in the Picture by Allison Tate:Last weekend, my family traveled to attend my oldest niece's Sweet Sixteen party. My brother and sister-in-law planned this party for many months and intended it to be a big surprise, and it included a photo booth for the guests.I showed up to the party a bit late and, as usual, slightly askew from trying to dress myself and all my little people for such a special night out. I'm still carrying a fair amount of baby weight and wearing a nursing bra, and I don't fit into my cute clothes. I felt awkward and tired and rumple I was leaning my aching back against the bar, my now 5-month-old baby sleeping in a carrier on my chest (despite the pounding bass and dulcet tones of LMFAO blasting through the room) when my 5-year-old son ran up to me.

"Come take pictures with me, Mommy," he yelled over the music, "in the photo booth!"

I hesitated. I avoid photographic evidence of my existence these days. To be honest, I avoid even mirrors. When I see myself in pictures, it makes me wince. I know I am far from alone; I know that many of my friends also avoid the camera.

It seems logical. We're sporting mama bodies and we're not as young as we used to be. We don't always have time to blow dry our hair, apply make-up, perhaps even bathe (ducking). The kids are so much cuter than we are; better to just take their pictures, we think.

But we really need to make an effort to get in the picture. Our sons need to see how young and beautiful and human their mamas were. Our daughters need to see us vulnerable and open and just being ourselves -- women, mamas, people living lives. Avoiding the camera because we don't like to see our own pictures? How can that be okay?

Too much of a mama's life goes undocumented and unseen. People, including my children, don't see the way I make sure my kids' favorite stuffed animals are on their beds at night. They don't know how I walk the grocery store aisles looking for treats that will thrill them for a special day. They don't know that I saved their side-snap, paper-thin baby shirts from the hospital where they were born or their little hospital bracelets in keepsake boxes high on the top shelves of their closets. They don't see me tossing and turning in bed wondering if I am doing an okay job as a mother, if they are okay in their schools, where we should take them for a vacation, what we should do for their birthdays. I'm up long past the news on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and eating cookies and milk, and I spend hours hunting the Internet and the local Targets for specially-requested Halloween costumes and birthday presents. They don't see any of that.

Someday, I want them to see me, documented, sitting right there beside them: me, the woman who gave birth to them, whom they can thank for their ample thighs and their pretty hair; me, the woman who nursed them all for the first years of their lives, enduring porn star-sized boobs and leaking through her shirts for months on end; me, who ran around gathering snacks to be the week's parent reader or planning the class Valentine's Day party; me, who cried when I dropped them off at preschool, breathed in the smell of their post-bath hair when I read them bedtime stories, and defied speeding laws when I had to rush them to the pediatric ER in the middle of the night for fill-in-the-blank (ear infections, croup, rotavirus).

I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.

When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don't look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her -- her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That's the mother I remember. My mother's body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn't care that she didn't look like a model. She was my mama.

So when all is said and done, if I can't do it for myself, I want to do it for my kids. I want to be in the picture, to give them that visual memory of me. I want them to see how much I am here, how my body looks wrapped around them in a hug, how loved they are.

I will save the little printed page with four squares of pictures on it and the words "Morgan's Sweet Sixteen" scrawled across the top with the date. There I am, hair not quite coiffed, make-up minimal, face fuller than I would like -- one hand holding a sleeping baby's head, and the other wrapped around my sweet littlest guy, who could not care less what I look like.

This article couldn’t be more true!! I take TONS of pictures which leads to me being out of the picture!  I don’t necessarily feel like I hide from the camera as she stated above but I know lots of people who do (and shouldn’t).  My problem is, again, that I’m the one that is always taking the pictures because I LOVE taking pictures of my family and I want to take pictures! But I want to be seen a little more often to help my kids remember…I can honestly say that I wish I had more pictures of me and my mom as I was growing up. So here’s to thinking creatively and letting the kids take turns taking pics, putting the camera on timer mode and running  like a mad woman before the picture snaps, or asking more strangers to simply take a picture! I loved this article and she couldn’t have said it better.   So here’s my take of Keeping Mom in the Picture (by letting the kids have the camera this go round….).  You just have to scroll down to get to the part where I’m in.  Need to do more of things like this!! We had a blast.