Family Photo Shoot

Yesterday was another busy day to wind up our week...well I guess today technically winds up the week...but I think of today as the weekend. So the two top things on my list to do yesterday were to (1) get my oil changed since I know I was well over 7000 miles since my last change (my sticker wasn't readable so I just kept forgetting); and (2) take pictures of the kids.

Where I get my oil changed is downtown near the train station and many alleys and grungy looking places...my favorite look in pictures (I despise portrait style posed pictures and they never end up well with my crew anyway). So instead of waiting 1 1/2 hours on my car we loaded up the stroller and walked around downtown taking pictures.

My friend, Holly, met me so I could also take some pictures of her son, Jai, at the same time. Talk about stressful...we were crossing streets, seeing weird people in the alleys...and with two almost 3-year-olds and 2 wild boys (Scyler was the only one being good but she was bored to tears)...you can see why I was stressed!

But we accomplished what we wanted...in under 2 hours...and I took approximately 300 pictures and got about 50 really good ones of Jai and 100 of my kids. I have edited mine but still working on ideas for a few storyboards to make...there were so many good ones that is the best way I can think to include them all (BTW a storyboard is one of those long pictures with 3-5 individual pictures on it). I still have to edit Jai's and I will post some of the best ones when I finish.

Here are some of my favorites...I still have some editing to do on them but they are mostly finished...if you can't read the quotes on some of them, just click on the picture to make it bigger.
















I had to edit a LOT on little miss Rylee due to her boo boo on her nose from Thursday's tumble. Here is what her boo boo looked like (I fixed it in the pictures or tried to anyway)...



So after the photo adventure...we picked up my car that was now ready...and then headed to Pop's house to drop off Scyler. We were going swimming at Holly's but Scyler said she was ready to go back so we dropped her off first. I am sure Scyler was ready for a break from us. I don't know if her life at home is near as busy as ours but as you can read in my previous posts we are gone every night doing something or another. She said she was tired a lot which gave me the impression that she wasn't used to being on the go like we were.

Also going from being an only child to living with 3 siblings was quite a change for her too. She got upset a couple days when Jett and Rylee were "bothering" her and getting her stuff. I tried to explain to her that when you leave a cell phone, iPod, DS or any other expensive item just laying around...they will find it and play with it. They don't know the difference between toys and expensive things. She wasn't used to having to actually put her stuff up. I tell Davis daily that if he can't take the time to put his stuff up out of reach...then it is fair game to the little ones...and when something gets torn up then it does not get replaced. He has lost many cool things this way because he still isn't good at putting his stuff up.

So we took Scyler to Pop's where she could get some peace and quiet and we headed to Holly's to swim. Davis didn't behave too well which made for a tense day for me and Holly's son was very tired so he had to head inside for a nap.

Jett had his life jacket so he had a blast jumping off the diving board for the first time since he was 18 months old...he jumped all that summer and then has been afraid to since. Isn't it funny how kids forget from summer to summer what they learn?? Duffer fussed at me for not getting pictures of Jett but by that point I was over the picture taking!!!

We headed home around 4 and rested. The Clymens came over to watch Transformers...which Tommy said he'd never seen but it turned out he had. I fell asleep of course halfway through it...but I had good reason...long busy day, then cleaning (all while my neck is still killing me!!!).

Today we aren't doing a thing!!! That is until we have to be at the ball field at 3:30 for their football game. Afterwards we are coming home and doing NOTHING!!! I think we are going to have a cookout tomorrow with Duffer's family so we can see Scyler one last time (and hopefully I will get some pictures of Duffer and Scyler together because I didn't get to this week with all the chaos going on)....plus we have Rebels tryouts at 2pm for Davis (we missed today because I didn't know about them).

I will update on Sunday with pictures from the cookout....have a great weekend.