Catching Up

Alright.... I am trying to sort through the photo challenge list and the pictures I have taken while I was visiting my parents.  I feel so unorganized right now.  I have all the suitcases unpacked but none of the laundry done.  We got back here Saturday night and Keith put me right to work mowing the lawn.  Sunday we were on the boat and so today is our first day at home.  It is awful!  The girls have trashed every single room in the house.  I don't even know where to begin with the house so let's escape back into my pictures and forget about that mess for awhile!

July 12:  Flashback  (This is a photo of the hippo in the Tawas City park that the girls were playing on.  It is a flashback because I was their age when I played on it.  Back then, the park was full of these sculptures:  castle, fish, whale, Pluto the dog, a boot, etc.)

July 13:  White  (Lilies in my backyard)

July 14:  Morning  Mourning  (We lost our lovely family pet, Daisy on the 15th)

July 15:  My Drive (I-75 North/ Standish Exit, heading home to Tawas)

July 16:  Frame 

July 17:  Around the Table  (Goodman Family Reunion Lunch)

July 18:  Favorite Person
Not playing this one.  I couldn't choose just one.

July 19:  Adventure:  (The girls and I ran around Frankenmuth doing some shopping.)

July 20:  Treasure  (A blurry image of my favorite restaurant, Desi's.  It is a treasure.)

July 21:  Looking Up  (I'm back home.  I am enjoying kicking back in the recliner but looking up is Gary, the deer.)

Almost done!!!

Day 11

I can't believe I am still doing this photo challenge for July!  I am skipping Day 10:  My Style.  I don't really know what I want to photograph for that.  It can't be clothes... I am a sloppy dresser.  Jeans and t-shirts accessorized with breakfast or lunch.  So let's just imagine that and skip ahead to today.

July 11:  Homemade Art  

We are lucky enough to have met some really awesome kids and their fantastic moms through preschool and we tend to see each other quite often during the summer.  Our fearless leader Nicole always plans a day for us to do tie dye t-shirts.  I prepared our shirts ahead of time by wetting them and bundling them up.  I used zip ties instead of rubber bands because the bands kept breaking.  Perfect use for them but a few of them cut through the plastic bags I had the shirts stored in and dyed my fabric tote bag.  Oh well.  I let the girls do all their own coloring and look at the focus in this picture!  They are serious about color use and placement.  I was extremely impressed with Lilly... my messy kid.  The one who flies through everything just to get it done.  Not with this.  She took her time.  This was a great day and I can't wait to see how the shirts turn out.  I plan on sewing dresses out of them again this year.  Love it!!

Picture This ... July

July 2nd:  Frame  (For this I am interpreting it as frame worthy.)

July 3rd:  Ordinary Moments  (In the summer, there is nothing more ordinary than my girls eating strawberries on the beach.)

July 4th:  Celebration  (Lauren watching the fireworks.)

July 5th:  Hero  (How can a girl not look up to her dad?)

July 6th:  Tiny Reminder (The girls drew chalk drawings all over my parent's street.  Tiny reminders of how much they love our family.)

 July 7th:  Find Fun  (My partner in crime for the night was Jaimee and this was our last glimpse of the cabin as we took off in the golf cart to have a blast!  Fun was found!)

 July 9th:  Neighborhood  (Mom and Lauren playing on Janet Street... the neighborhood I grew up in.  The best neighborhood for kids!)

Yes, I did skip July 8th:  Food.  I should have taken a food pic because we stopped at G's in East Tawas for brunch on our way out of Tawas and had their famous bread spears.  Are you picturing it?  Click.

Starting the July Photo Challenge

I'm not a blogger.  I never blog, yet here I am.  Again.  The whole reason I started blogging years ago was to keep my family up to date on my pregnancies, then babies....  Now that I have been using Facebook for a few years, I don't need the blog.  However, my friend Alita asked me if I wanted to participate in a photo a day photo challenge for the month of July.  So I am back to blogging as a way to entertain myself and have a place to post my, hopefully, daily pictures.

Day 1:  Red 

Red Heads in the Fairy Garden

Back with Inappropriateness

It seems like once a year or so I have a post where I announce I am a bad blogger and that I am back to make it right.  Well, I'm back, again.  Since I have discovered facebook, I haven't had a need to update this blog until now.  A friend insisted that I enter a contest revolving around the little, scary elf on a shelf.  Just do a quick Google search or look on Pinterest and you will see hundreds of cute ideas to play into the magic of Christmas and keep your children behaving well.  However, the twist to this contest is that the elf should be photographed doing something inappropriate.  As Barney Stinson would say, "Challenge accepted!"

We were already playing by our own rules.  Lauren was terrified of the original elf and wanted a girl elf.  So we sent a special request to Santa and surprise, surprise our pleas were answered with a perky, pretty little thing that the girls named Raquel.  She has only been in our house a few days but as gotten into a few situations that the girls didn't quite understand - strip poker with the Kens - but that is as far as I am willing to go with the girls.  They just thought it was a card game with the boys' shirts off.  Wink.  Wink.

So while the girls were at school today, I decided it would be the only chance I had to get the inappropriate shenanigans out of the way when they wouldn't see it.  So out came the whipped cream and off came the clothes.   It was a lot more difficult then I expected.  The cream kept melting.  So I took the picture as quickly as I could and popped her back on top of the deer mount in the living room where the girls expect her to be and started the upload.  The picture came out a little blurry but the inappropriateness came out clearly. 
I
Someday, when my girls are adults and hiding the elves around their houses, I hope they can appreciate their mother's bizarre sense of humor.

The contest can be found at http://www.babyrabies.com/2012/11/inappropriate-elf-contest-2012/

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Lauren's valentine's day cards

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