Practice makes perfect (someday maybe)

I love to practice on flowers-they are beautiful of course but they also don’t move when I say “hold still” and they don’t complain!

          

                                   

 

                     

 

                            

 

                    

 

    

 

              

 

                                

Still stalking the family

With the boys at school today, I set my sights camera on Max. Here are two shots from today, both SOOC (straight out of camera) and edited just a bit for fun.

Here is Max on his normal, back of the couch perch waiting for the school bus to come.

 

                            (SOOC)

Today had been a very busy day though for Max, full of chasing birds and UPS trucks and he just couldn’t keep his eyes open long enough to greet the bus. It is a rough life after all.

                           (SOOC)

 

I took a bunch of flower pictures. I will sort through them soon and share anything worth sharing.

Mamarazzi

I learned a new term the other day-mamarazzi. It basically means “mom who stalks child with camera”. That definitely describes me well these days. A fellow mom blogger told me about a place that rents cameras and lenses. You reserve what you want and they ship it by FedEx. Return shipping is part of the rental fee. I rented a Canon 50mm 1.4 lens. Steve told me that renting would not help me make a future purchase choice, it would only make me want one now…and he is SO right. I really, really, really want one…but I digress.

I have stalked the boys and the dog for the last few days, taking a ton of pictures at a ton of settings. I think I am even going to rent one again when we go to Texas in June so I can take some pictures of my best friend Tina’s kiddos. The minute I pick up the camera my boys turn on their heels and head the other way, maybe it will take John a day or two to learn that.

I haven’t posted in awhile so I thought I would throw up a picture of each of the boys real quick. I can tell that this lens is nice because I didn’t edit these at all (and I wouldn’t want to).

They both look so old-especially Cayden. He will be 14 in a few short weeks. Where does time go???

 

 

 

 

(yes, as you can see, their allegiance no longer belongs to Texas teams)

Checking off boxes with little red X’s

There are 66 days until we go back home to Amarillo for a visit.  Notice I said “home”— it will always be my home.  We are counting down the days on the calendar.

This morning I found myself making a mental list of all the things I was looking forward to.  Here it is:

 

• Cherry Limeades from Hud’s (no such thing as a Cherry Limeade in ND)
• Wild Cherry snow cones (again, no real snow cones here either)
• Sonic Ice –- the best ice cubes ever (and it does make a difference)
• Chicken fried rice from My Thai – my favorite restaurant ever.  I ate there 3 times a week, every week when I was pregnant with Cayden.  Funny, it’s his favorite too.
• Blue Bell Pecan Praline and Cream Ice cream
• Watching the boys ride the roller coasters at Wonderland Amusement Park – they have such a great time, you can’t help but have fun too
• Chicken fried steak – from somewhere, anywhere would be better than ND.  ND puts brown gravy all over theirs!
• Riding around in the car with my BFF Tina, acting like teenage girls, catching up on the latest, pretending we see each other every week instead of once or twice a year
• Worshipping at “my” church, Trinity Fellowship – I miss it so much.  There is nothing like it and I will always consider it my home church even if I have to listen to podcasts of Pastor Jimmy instead of watch him in person

 

• AND THE NUMBER ONE THING I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO, OF COURSE, IS GETTING TO SPEND 3 GLORIOUS WEEKS WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY

 

 

Laura

Getting our ducks in a row

where does that saying come from?

We are thrilled that Braxton was accepted into the same middle school that Cayden currently attends.  It is the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math school.  We have had nothing to complain about thus far, in fact we feel blessed that Cayden has been able to attend and even more richly blessed that Braxton will join him next year.  The approval process was based on many things such as grades, state achievement test scores in math, and teacher recommendations, but he did receive points in his favor for having a sibling at the school.

So, schedules are being made for next year’s classes.  Braxton decided to take band.  We are very excited for him and we hope that it will help him make friends and find his niche in middle school.  We went to band orientation night and he tried out many instruments, got a feel for what he liked, and got recommendations from the band teachers. 

 

 

We will soon be investing in one of these

 

                           

 

 

and one of these!

 

                             

 

By the way, keep voting for Fargo.  We are up against Juneau, Alaska.  It might seem obvious to vote for them because of their bitter winters but we have extremes in other categories too.  Take a second and click below to vote. :)

http://wwworigin.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/americas-toughest-weather-city-final4_2011-03-24

UPDATE: We made it to the final two.  We are now against Bradford, PA in the final match.

Laura

For the love of Pete!

It’s almost April and today was a snow day!!  The boys are home from school, cussin’ and discussin’ so I sent them outside.  I tried to convince them to go out by telling them that it might be the last big snow of the season and they should enjoy it.  Cayden just rolled his eyes at me and said “sure it will” (dripping in sarcasm of course).

The funny thing is that Fargo has been making sandbags for weeks in flood preparation and was all set to start delivering them to the neighborhoods but that is all on hold thanks to this latest storm.

In the past 24 hours we have had rain, sleet, snow, ice, thunder sleet and graupel.  I will give a prize (ok, an imaginary pat on the back) to anyone who knows what that is.  I never knew the name for the type of precipitation until today.  According to Wikipedia:

 Graupel (also called soft hail or snow pellets; refers to precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water condense on a snowflake, forming a 2–5 mm ball of rime; the snowflake acts as a nucleus of condensation in this process. The term graupel is the German word for this meteorological phenomenon.

                       

 

They said we got about 8 new inches of snow (although that doesn’t count the other forms of precipitation).  We were lucky, several towns nearby got 12-18 inches.  In the end, though, it only matters how much moisture was present since it all eventually ends up in the Red River. You can kind of judge how much snow we got based on Cayden’s height in this picture.  I think we got more than 8 inches.

you can see how thrilled he is to be outside :)

 

Now the drift between the houses is halfway to the roof and the mailboxes are nearly buried again.

 

Thankfully in North Dakota the snow plows come fairly quickly.

 

Max hates the snow.  He tries to find any way, an excuse to not go outside to go potty.  I think that a lot of times he would rather go on the floor and take the punishment he knows will come.  For some inexplicable reason today, Max loved the snow.  He ran all around the yard with snow up to his armpits and then proceeded to roll all around in the snow, caking his entire coat with snow and ice.

 

Cayden even put a new twist on one of Max’s favorite games—snow ball catch and fetch.  If you look closely you can see the snow ball in the middle of the picture.  There was so much moisture in the snow that the balls stayed intact and Max was able to bring them back to Cayden.

 

The Weather Channel is running a contest called America's Toughest Weather City Tournament.  You vote online on their website.  You can use this link      http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/americas-toughest-weather-city-tournament_2011-03-12.  Please vote for Fargo.  I don’t think we actually win anything other than recognition and sympathy but I figure if we have to live in these conditions, we deserve to win.  We are down to the final 8 cities and recently beat out International Falls, MN.  They take our flooding into account and certainly days like yesterday and today factor in.  So, as a favor to me, please vote.

 

As you can see, the sun is out today, the snow has stopped, the snow plow has come.  For the love of Pete, I sure hope school is back in session tomorrow!

Who is this Pete character?  I’ve got a few things to say to him :)

 

Laura

Hocus Pocus Bogus?

 

Recently Max has been sporting a new shirt.

 

It’s called a Thundershirt.  I am curious if any of you have ever heard of them.  Before I go any further I will tell you that the whole premise is ridiculous!  Any sound minded individual would agree.  But, I first noticed  the ad in the Readers Digest (and anything you find in the Readers Digest is true, right?  Kind of like, anything you read on the internet is the God’s honest truth, right?).  I laughed it off and thought anyone who would pay $36 for that was a sucker.

But Max has been having a lot of trouble lately.  It started with the snowplow and the UPS truck.  He could hear them coming for miles it seemed.  He would run from window to window, door to door, barking and shaking.  He would continue his “fit” long after they were gone.  Over time he started reacting this way to pick up trucks, then vans, then cars.  Now he begins his ritual in response to nothing.  It seems like he wants to stop but can’t.  He cries as he is running but you can’t catch him to console him. He barks until he gets hoarse.  All in response to nothing.

I know you can medicate dogs for anxiety but I really didn’t want to do that…and giving Max medicine is kind of what you’d imagine giving a cat a bubble bath would be like.

So, the Thundershirt was starting to sound like maybe it might be worth a try.  They offer a 100% guarantee and as you can see below, they also offer two of the absolute cheesiest commercials ever!

 

 

 

I kind of understand the theory that it works in the same way positive pressure works on autistic kids and swaddling works on newborns.  Other than that, it all seems like hocus pocus bogus to me.

The things is, for Max it works!!!  When we start to see him “winding up” we put it on him and almost instantly he relaxes.  His body tension releases and his barking stops.  He stops running his race track pattern from window to window, door to door, and lies down on the couch with a rawhide or toy and you can just tell he is so much happier.

 

 

In a situation that we know might be stressful, we put it on ahead of time and while Max notices the noise or distraction, it doesn’t make him a half-crazed, neurotic canine.

Bottom line…he is happier, we are happier.  Even if it sounds ridiculous and I have no idea why or how it works.  If you have similar problems, let us be your testimonial!  Try it out.

 

Laura

 

By the way, thanks Tina for helping me figure out how to add videos.  It’s much easier than I was trying to make it!