A New Camera Lens

I got a new camera lens!! It is a Canon 50mm 1.8! I LOVE it! It is affordable and amazing. Because of the low F-stop, it creates these really great effects (called bokeh's - or out of focus areas) and I can shoot in lower light without having to use a flash. So here are a few pictures using the new lens. I haven't had a chance to really play with it yet - so stay tuned for more!

I just love his chunky feet!!

The C-SPAN Bus

Last Thursday the C-SPAN bus came to our library so we decided to check it out. Here are Gabe and Selah staning in front of it with our library story teller, "Grandma Green Jeans".

Grandma Green Jeans is a celebrity in our house. The kids have had so much fun with her at story time!

The C-SPAN bus is pretty much a bus that travels the county explaining the technology of C-SPAN. It was pretty cool.

So if you happen to see the C-SPAN bus in your neighborhood - go hop on board and check it out!

Miguel Rolls!

Miguel rolled over from back to tummy for the first time on Sunday!! He is getting so big!

Miguel is 4 Months Old!

Miguel is 4 months old! He is reaching for things now, holding his head up and sooo close to rolling over. He is a cutie and LOVES big brother and sister. He is officially bigger than Selah at 1 year - weighing in at 16 pounds, 6 ounces and 25 1/2 inches long. He is in the 75th percentile in both weight and height! Maybe he will be our tall one!

1 month old:

 

2 months old:

 3 months old:

 4 months old:

 Byron doesn't like the picture above. He says it looks like I strangled him - but I think it is beautiful.

 He is teething like crazy already - he is constantly chomping on his fingers or his bib, or anything he can shove in his mouth. Poor baby!

Doesn't he look like a such a gentleman in that tie?!?

Happy Valentine's Day from Miguel

My mom loves using pictures of the kids as her computer desktop background. I usually send them to her via email, but one of our emails is compressing the images too much for her to use, so I will post them here for her to snag now....plus it is a really cute way for Miguel to say "Happy Valentine's Day" on the blog. These images are from his 4 month photo shoot - look for more pictures to come from this shoot soon!!

(The digiscrap papers used here are from Shabby Princess.)

Another Story Time with Gabe

I love it when we come home from the Library with new books and Gabe goes straight to the bag, pulls out one of his choices and starts reading! That is exactly what happened on our last trip. He loved this take on "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" so much that he wanted to read it for our blog. So without further ado....here is Gabe (with a slight head cold) reading There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Fly Guy by Tedd Arnold. Enjoy!!

A Snow Day Adventure

Our February started out in a very exciting way. On Monday evening (Jan 31st), Gabe and Byron headed down to Belton to stay the night with Nicol. Tuesday morning they all left Belton and headed down to Houston for Byron's Aunt Dora's funeral services. Tuesday morning in Fort Worth was covered with ice and snow. In fact, the roads were so bad that Byron and Gabe weren't able to return Tuesday night as planned. Wednesday morning was no better here - we were experiencing temperatures in the teens and twenties and nothing over freezing was expected until Saturday. At around 8:00 our power went off. No big deal - the state was doing "rolling power outages" to conserve power. It came back on within an hour. At 9:30 the power went off again. Byron and Gabe started a slick drive home. At around 11:00 our downstairs neighbor gifted us with 3 piles of firewood. He also informed us that the power company had no idea our power was out and didn't know when the power would be back on. Our indoor temperature had cooled off to 65 degrees. Byron and Gabe finally made it home at 12:30 and built a fire to try to keep the apartment warm.

Here are the kids trying to stay warm during their afternoon nap - I think the excitement of the fire and the snow was too much though. No one fell asleep!

By 3:00 we were still without power. Byron went to the front office and found out that we were the only building without power and that the power company would be out the next day at the earliest. By then, even with a fire, our apartment had cooled to 60 degrees. We realized that we needed to stay somewhere else. Due to the Super Bowl being held in Arlington this year, there were no hotel rooms around. Luckily, some sweet members of our Sunday School class gave us warm beds to sleep in for the night and a great place to play during the day! They had everything we could ever dream of needing for an impromptu over night trip - bunk beds for the kids, a bed for us, a crib for Miguel and toys and books galore for the big kids! It was perfect!

In all we recieved about 4 inches of snow. Our power finally came back on Thursday evening at around 6:00pm. Our apartment was 39 degrees inside! Yikes! We are so thankful for the generous people that were there to help us this weekend!



January Activities

In January the kids and I enjoyed crafts and fun having mainly to do with a winter theme. We made flourless peanut butter cookies for a playdate, snowflake tortillas, absorbing salt art (using salt, glue and food colorting) and these snowflakes made from coffee filters:

 For this craft, we folded the coffee filters in half about 4 times. Then we cut shapes - like you would a regular paper snowflake. Once our snowflakes were cut, the kids colored on them with markers. We placed them on wax paper and the kids spritzed them with water until the colors started to run. Once they were dry they were ready to hang! They look beautiful with the sun shining through. It was a great way to teach the concept that no two snowflakes are the same - they are all as unique and special as all of us!