tree house.....

I have come to the conclusion that facebook is about the biggest time suck there is on the internet. I refused to make a profile for months and months not wanting to get caught up in all that childish stuff....well I got caught up in it and have almost 200 'friends' to show for it. Some of these people I talk to on a regular basis, some every now and then, others I haven't seen or talked to since high school. Now just because I haven't seen or talked to these people doesn't mean they are not close to my heart, but keeping up with what they are eating for lunch or their mafia wars is not worth taking that time away from my family and my hobby that gets me on the computer anyway and I, by choice, let it take away to much time.
SO I am calling up that little thing called self control and I am stepping away from facebook. I am not going to delete my profile because I do still want to keep in contact, but I will not get on everyday.
The only reason I use to get on the computer when the boys went to bed was to research and study photography. Now when I sit down to the computer after work, when the boys are begging for attention, I let myself get sucked right into facebook, and for what? I rarely do anything with my photography anymore even though that is truly what I love besides my family.
With all this extra time I will have on my hands, I will do art projects with my kiddos after school, play ball with them outside and probably take a few pictures of them! And after bedtime, I will pursue my photography more.


Ok, now off my soapbox of my facebook shortcomings, on with the tree house!

Now anyone that knows Scott and me knows that we do not finish projects! With all the good intentions we just get side tracked with other things. Well scott got a wild hair a few months ago and started the kids a tree house out back. I was a little nervous when he first said something about it- thinking that we would end up with a few hundred bucks of wasted plywood stuck up in a tree somewhere. But he scouted out the perfect spot for this thing, four small trees in a perfect square not to far from the back porch and only a few yards from the deer feeder. Only a few months later believe it or not, with a lot of planning, re-planning, help from the kids and scotts dad it is finished. The thing is even painted. We let the kids pick out the paint for the inside- neon yellow and lime green, I broke out the sewing machine to make them spongebob curtains and it has an enormous red stag antler for the handle that probably weighs more than the kids.
Now if we could just get them to go play in it! I am sure with the weather changing...hopefully soon it will get some use. I imagine it might turn into a deer stand come deer season.

and now for the photogrpahy part:)

B Bar retreat.....

a girls weekend...just girls...out in the middle of nowhere...NO BOYS...

i was recently invited to tag along to a girls weekend and nearly turned it down because of my anxiety of being around people i don't know, and being away from my family. I have gotten way to dependent on S and the kids and decided that a weekend away would be really good for me and besides i needed to get my camera out without a kid hangin on my leg.

we ate and ate and ate a little more. i made new friends. we ate some more, watched a chick flick that was suppose to be just that a chick flick....i cried like a big fat baby in a room full of practical strangers. me and me friend M walked around the property, a 200 acre sheep ranch taking pictures. we had to keep awayng from a very curiously aggressive sheep. we stayed up late talking girl talk, slept late, played all kinds of fun games. i love games. i love to play games with people i know. the thought of playing games with people i don't know, the chance that i could make a total and complete fool of myself makes me almost go into a panic attack, but i had a blast being a fool. i had fun, relaxed and made new friends.

i missed my boys, I missed Scott and i was exhausted......all in a good weekend!

beautiful snow.....

i still can't believe we have witnessed snow 3 times in 1 season...in TEXAS! the first 2 times did not stick to anything, but it was still beautiful. this last time we had a nice blanket of snow over everything for a whole day and in some spots for 2 days! the boys were not as excited about it as i was, they were to cold! crazy kids! i took the camera out for a bit and got a few pictures that came out...it is hard to shoot snow out in the cold when you are not used to it:)

bullseye.....

if it was up to me K would not have anything to do with any guns at this age, but he now has his cousins old bb gun. i was not happy, but he and S really enjoy going out to find cactus and such to shoot at. at first S held it and K just pulled the trigger, but now he holds it himself. And he is actually pretty dang good. he can barely hold the thing up but he can hit what he aims at almost every time! maybe we should get him into one of those redneck shooting contests.....:)

by the river.....

last month my MIL, SIL, BIL, niece and nephew came to visit, on their way out of town we brought them to the river in town to see how pretty the park is.

for this group shot i climbed up a huge rock, contorted myself in the most uncomfortable position to balance my camera on yet another rock to use the timer...should have brought the tripod! i think there should have also been a video camera to catch me getting off said rock to make it into the picture!


this is T with daddy right after he fell

mean man costume, sharks and seahorses.....

in the car yesterday on the way to town this is the convo i had with K.....

K: mommy I want a mean man costume.
M: why, K its like 7 months to Halloween and why do you want a mean man costume?
K: Moooommm, i want a mean man costume so i can scare away the sharks and catch a sea horse with my fishing net in the ocean.
M: oh, that makes since.....


seriously, where did that come from?

silly boys.....

this is what i have to be happy with when i get my camera out...at least they didn't run like they normally do!

enchanted rock.....

with a picnic packed and walking shoes on we took out on our 45 minute drive to enchanted rock with my sil, bil, niece and nephew. the weather was as near perfect as it could be in mid January to go on an outside adventure. when we left out the sky was clear with a few puffy white clouds, a slight breeze and warm enough for a light long sleeve shirt. it sure never crossed my mind that we should bring along umbrellas, heavy jackets and possibly an anchor!

by the time we paid our entrance to the park and found a place to eat we could see the ominous cloud rolling in. lunch was fun as we had to hold everything down because the wind picked up so much, the rain stared and it turned COLD all in about 20 minutes! we decided to sit the rain out in the car, but finally figured we would not melt, so we scrounged up enough jackets for everyone to wear and headed out to hike!

to make a long story short, it was so windy K and T had a hard time walking by themselves once we got up to the top of the rock and it was SO cold we were all miserable! the way down was better once the rain stopped and the sun came out! it did turn out to be a fun trip, but we are all looking forward to going back when the weather is nicer so we can actually take our time and enjoy the beauty!
these were all taken on the way down....

there are very defined paths that are easy to follow, but we decided to go down the hard way.....:)




sorry stef...just couldn't resist!

Strike.....

i am just gonna pretend i have not neglected this poor blog because if i do then i will have more of those kind of entries than regular ones, so on to the bowling party we had for K's 4th b-day!

K was gonna be four and i didn't think it would be a real big deal. i certainly wasn't gonna go out of my way to make a big celebration because the other 3 birthdays he could not have cared less. well right before Christmas i made the mistake of mentioning his birthday and the first thing out of his mouth was when his party was and what we were doing! and by mistake i mean that is the only thing i heard about EVERYDAY for nearly 2 months(well besides him reminding me he wanted everything on TV from Santa).
being so far from houston i didn't know what we would do to make it fun for him, i thought about the jumping party but that just didn't seem fun with only 2 other kids that he knows. At the last minute we decided to load up and have a bowling party in Houston with grandparents and cousins. I don't think i have seen him so excited about anything so far and he has never even been to a bowling alley. he and the other kids had such a blast bowling! I thought it might be a disaster with the babies, but they had just as much fun and every one of them did wonderful!

this is a succession of photos to show how excited K got EVERY TIME it was his turn..





T found the air vents on the ball return machine and just hung out there!

project.....

Scott had the brainy idea the other day to build the boys bunk beds out of ceder from the property. he has no plans to go by, so i guess he is just gonna wing it. so far we have one tree cut down and half way stripped. we will see how long it takes for this project to be complete........if it gets finished it sure is gonna be neat!