Family Picture Cray Cray Day...

Why is it so hard to get ONE great family picture????

Let me back up...

So I had this brilliant idea that since we live in Alaska we should take our family Christmas card pictures outside...late November when it's -2 outside. Sounds good in theory right? Well maybe if I had girls it would have been easy.... but then again maybe not.

So I mentioned this idea to my friend Michelle and she offered not only to take the picture's but use her awesome camera. What? And she was amazing! 

So I will attempt to tell this story with pictures. It's more fun that way.

So this is before the fall....Boys are happy.

Look at me mom! Still happy.



I can jump higher than Ethan!

What!! Dad let you bring sleds? And mom let you sled before pictures. Were they born yesterday?!?!

Our beautiful location for pictures! 10 miles away from our home.



Why does Ethan look like he has been crying? Wait while sledding he took a nose dive into the pavement. Yep that happened. And they are freezing because mom just told them to take ALL winter gear off in -2 weather AND look happy! They did not see that coming. Mom relented and let the hats stay on.

Oops... forgot to take my gloves off!

At least Ethan has stopped crying.

Not only was Michelle an amazing photographer but she got Ethan to laugh.



Love this picture of Bradley....But is it me or does this picture say "Mom I am your favorite right?"



Yay we did get a great family picture!!! But it was NO easy task!

Ethan was in no mood to take a picture by himself so I cropped this one out of our family one.

This is Michelle's son Jaxon, AKA Ethan's BEST friend! Such a cutie!

So there you have it...Our fun "CRAY CRAY" family picture day!

Help!!! Pinterest is starting to turn me into a hoarder!

I love pinterest and I hate it!

I hate it because the amount of time I invest in looking for projects can be ridiculous at times. And don't get me started on everything I have to started saving for fear I will see something on pinterest and will have a need for 50 glass spaghetti jars.

I love it because I do actually do some of the projects and have fun doing them. Anyways here are a couple of completed projects so far.

 

The original on Pinterest was very plain so I added my spin on the idea!

I took various kids chores/command center idea's and made this.

Just a few of my collection of spaghetti jars.

Bradley our "mostly" serious child...

Bradley is our twelve year old going on thirty. He is a mini Bob. He is a wonderful older brother. He really takes this role seriously. His favorite TV channel's to watch are the history channel, national geographic, and anything that he can further his knowledge with. Needless to say it is rare that we watch TV together because I would be bored to tears!

But he does have a funny side to him. Which he does not get from Bob...he he. For example the other day Bob and I "might" have been having a heated discussion and Bradley says as loud as he can while waving his arms at us, "Girls! Girls! You’re both pretty!!!! And of course that was the end of our argument....oops I mean "heated discussion" and we just burst out laughing. It was perfect comedic timing.

He is in sixth grade. Thankfully still in elementary school. He is really loving his new school Ravenwood. He currently is being tested to go into their gifted program (which he always was in when we lived in Minnesota.) He is in the band at school and plays the Saxophone.

Bradley is a very compassionate, kind and loving kid. The other day we were watching the new Spiderman movie and Spiderman’s uncle had just gotten shot and Bradley with tears in his eyes quietly got up and left the room. He has never been able to watch sad things. When he was younger his favorite movie was Monsters Inc. but towards the end he would always leave the room right before Mike had to say goodbye to "Boo". He probably would not like me saying all this but it's true. He just has a very tender heart.

It's funny that we have two boys who are complete opposites but I love it!

 



Bradley practicing his saxophone...

Bradley drew this during church...this is our worship pastor.



6th grade school picture

This is a wonderful award Bradley received!