Camera (and brain) Dump

• Went to see Soul Surfer yesterday and loved it.  The surfing scenes are beautiful and Bethany Hamilton's heart is amazing. 

• Now, I can't wait to see Jane Eyre.  Its rare to have movies that I'm excited to go see but this is one of them.  I just finished reading the book for the first time and loved it.  I hope the movie lives up to the book.

•  The little man got a haircut recently.  His hair had gotten out. of. control.  I don't know why but it makes me sad to go and get his hair cut every time.  I think because it keeps lightening up and it makes me sad to cut off all that dark hair.  Here's a before picture I was glad to discover I had when I was getting all the photos off my camera last night:

And here he is, freshly shorn:

•  March Madness:  Brian is so happy to have a little buddy to share his love of basketball with.  Brian couldn't be happier than a puppy with two peeters (that's a Brian-ism, btw).

• A's friend spent the night about a month ago and we let the girls watch a movie before bed.  When I came back in the room about half an hour later, this is how I found the three of them.  And I was prepared for hours of giggling and telling them repeatedly to go to sleep.

• We took a much-needed family day trip up to Sedona a few weeks ago.  Perfect weather+ windows down+awesome playlist=perfect day.

This photo just cracks me up.  We had had grand plans of stopping for sandwiches and then finding a beautiful spot to have a picnic but we were so starving by the time we got into town that that plan got thrown out the window in favor of grabbing Subway and eating out of the back of the van.  It was just as fun.

• I started The Shred last week.  Today was day six.  I'm liking it so far.  Its only twenty minutes a day which feels so do-able after the hour long workouts with P90x.  I still like P90x, but was doing three times a week max (usually more like twice a week) and I needed something new to give me a kick in the pants again.  We're really excited about a trip to the beach in July and I am bound and determined to get in shape before then.  There's nothing worse than feeling disgusting in your own skin at the beach.  I have no vain aspirations of having Jillian's body by July but even just to lose a couple of inches here and there and to tone up some would be great.  I already feel so much better just from doing it a week.  I'll let you know if I see any major improvements at the end of the thirty days.

• I've done a little Spring cleaning/sprucing around the house lately.  Sure feels good to get the house a little more organized and a little more us.

Added a few more frames to the gallery wall.  I still need to get a couple more frames for the left side.  Its hard to take a photo of it in our hallway, but I love all the color up on the wall.

Got a new Ikea shelf to get Brian's office more organized.  With him working from home for his "real" job and trying to run a small business from our home on top of that, his office was getting out of control.  We spent an entire weekend a couple of weeks ago, clearing it out and reorganizing it again.  Its so nice in there again.

This is my little office nook off our master bedroom.  I've been slowly trying to get this area more organized especially since we started homeschooling this year.  I just bought that hanging organizer thingy on the left a couple of days ago.  Found it at Goodwill and its already helped a ton.  Its amazing what the simplest little things can do.

• Speaking of homeschooling, April has been my month to plan activities for our little homeschooling group.  Last week we had them all over for a cooking lesson.  We made soft pretzels (you can get the top secret Auntie Ann's recipe here--they're sooo good!).  It was so much fun to do this with all the kids.  A little crazy, but fun! 

• And continuing on the homeschooling theme, I love to see Miss A becoming an avid little reader.  She's just exploded with her reading abilities, I honestly can't believe how far she's come since the beginning of the year.  I love to see her carrying books with her now and reading to herself.

Its gotten to the point I can pretty much sit back and eat bon-bons now--I've even got her teaching little sister. 

• And lastly, just a couple of cute photos.

L is growing up.  He can ride his pony like a madman.  And he tells me "no" (actually he says it "mmmooooo!" ) all the time.  Its cute right now but I can tell we're edging in to the terrible-twos.  Which makes me want to scream "MMMMOOOOOO!!!!".

And a spontaneous face-painting session done with paints that were not meant for that purpose which meant my kids looked like this for several days.

And its now been two hours of my life just trying to put this stupid post together.  Why is it so hard to move photos around with blogger??    Maybe if I didn't try to put two months worth of photos into one post I wouldn't have these issues.  :)