For Christmas Keith and I decided to get a story book made that uses Brynlee's Photo superimposed over a mermaid to make her look like she is the main character in a book. We needed to send in a picture to the company that was making the book, of her head in an upright position, smiling and her eyes looking at the camera. It didn't seem like a hard task, but it turned out to be an almost impossible one! Brynlee loves to pose when the camera is on her. We took over 50 pictures and couldn't get one that would work! She is always cocking her head to one side, doing something cutesy with her lips, making silly faces and she RARELY looks at the camera. The picture to the right is the one we finally used. It was the only one that came close to the criteria we needed. I took me three days to get that picture!

A review of Events in 2010 - Rasberry Picking

In search of the perfect rasberry!

Rasberry picking is one of my very favorite summer activities. I have such fond memories of picking fruit with my Mom in the beautiful Carnation, WA, as a kid. There is something so wonderful about gorging on with fruit afterwards. We are a little crazy about picking fruit. Each year we pick strawberries and rasberries and usually bluberries. This are all seperate events, unless I get lucky and am able to get strawberries and rasberries on the same day. (doesn't usually happen). On a good year we also can peaches, make applesauce and fruit leather from the sour apples on my mother's tree, and I make pesto from fresh basil from a farmers field. I buy a huge amount of basil and then make it into pesto and then freeze it in small quanties.

My out of state friends can't believe we don't pick blackberries. Blackberries are a weed here and people are always fighting them off from taking over their yards. We eat our fill of fresh blackberries. The best kind are the slightly unripe ones that are sour (all my lemon-loving siblings agree!).

Every year I dream of apricots. But I can never get my hands on them! Apricots don't grow well in the Northwest. If anyone knows where I can buy some boxes of Apricots Paleease, let me know!! I dream of having a stash of dried apricots. Not the awful, squishy, soaked in sugar, bright orange ones you buy in bags at the store, but home dried apricots, tangy and chewy, and delicious. My taste buds are going crazy just thinking about it.

Aaah the taste of summer!

Super Heros

We just recently moved into a home! Hooray! But before that we lived in apartments for a year while Keith looked for a job and we tried to decide where we wanted to live. These pictures were taken one summer day. The kids had dressed up as SuperHeros using towels and they made construction paper masks. The cape Kamry is wearing is actually very strange Froggy/Rainbow wall hanging she found next to the dumpster.

"I can't believe anyone would throw this away!!" She exclaimed. It hung on her bedroom wall the rest of the year and then disappeared in the move. Hmmm. Not sure where it could have gone...(smirk). Okay, I just couldn't bear to look at it anymore!! It was really weird. It did make a great superhero cape though!

Don't mess with these dudes!

Blogging Repentance

Okay, so I have been a bad blogger. I actually just read the comments people posted on my blog that I started three years ago! Thanks everyone!

I keep going back and forth trying to decide if I should do it or not. I have a thousand reasons not to do it... If I blog then I will probably turn into a lousy journal writer. I can't blog because I am ashamed that I don't keep up with other people's blogs. And of course the biggest reason... if I blog, what if a pyschopath identity thief stalks us because of all the personal information I have slathered on the internet. I don't know what they will do with all that info, but something bad I am sure!! Of course I could make up fake names for all my kids, like twitter toes and dimple cheeks, but then I will probably end up confusing myself.

I know,I know, I can put security measures on my blog and only allow invited people, but all the people I kow that do that, for some reason, I can never get on their blog (during the once a year time I try to check everyone's blogs). I don't know why. Does my password expire? Does it kick me off if I don't check it often enough?

Anyway, enough rambling...I've decided to do it, just so that my kids don't feel bad I don't have a cute blog memory book to give them. I know my kids will feel hurt about that when they see all hundred of their friends with these fantastic picture laden books chronically their childhood.

So here goes...