Easter 2014

Easter this year was fun. The easter bunny came and brought good things and hid eggs. I'm pretty sure Brook let AJ even find one of the 50.  We went to church and I lost a bet because I said that church would be over in an hour and 15 minutes and it went over. AJ only asked if it was over about 40 times though, so I didn't even mind having to get scooters for Aaron as a result. At least we didn't have a full on melt down like we have had other years!  Small miracles, right?  Now that the kids are older, we were able to sit down and actually talk to Grammy, so that was really nice.  Aaron called this Easter "diva Easter", because the girls tend to run the show. Between Brooklynn and Abby they have such strong little personalities, that there is some truth in that! This will probably only get worse as Emerson gets older, so I think it's probably one of many diva holidays to come... AJ and his cousins could care less who's in charge as long as dessert is involved, so I think that everything is going to work out just fine.

Pants are for Morning Time

When Brooklynn was three she constantly changed clothes. You could talk to her and then do something quick and turn back around and she'd be wearing something completely different. I began to think of it as her own little magic trick. Some of her choices were a bit over the top but they were always really cute. I have problems putting together 5 decent outfits in a week, she could do it in a half an hour. AJ, not so much. It takes him a minimum of twenty minutes to get dressed, and the combinations are not so flattering. We set out clothes at night and he'll come downstairs in something not only totally different than what we picked together, but something totally different than anyone would ever let their child out of the house in. He comes downstairs with his shirt on inside out. He comes downstairs with his jeans on backwards. Ninety five percent of the time he puts his shoes on the wrong feet. You would think that he could at least get it right half of time, but not so much. For some reason, he prefers dress socks, so he comes downstairs in athletic pants and dress socks. To make matters worse he thinks that his dress socks go over his pants, so he comes downstairs with his pants tucked into his socks. Every once in awhile he'll come downstairs completely tangled up to the point where you not only wonder how he got his shirt on that way, but wonder if maybe it would be better to just cut it off of him than try to untangle the mess that he made. Then, when we get home we have the opposite problem. We can be home for 5 minutes and we'll decide to run back into town. We call him back downstairs and I'll hear Aaron say "AJ, where are your pants?" AJ just rolls his eyes and says"Dad, pants are for morning time." And so it begins again.

Camera traps

Aaron's newest hobby is camera traps. It's like a game camera (just more expensive) that is motion activated camera that you leave somewhere to get wildlife pictures. It even has 3 flashes that need to be set correctly so you can get really good night shots. Just like all of Aaron's hobbies, he has found ways to include the entire family. So, once a week, we all trudge into whatever remote area where bobcats or mountain lions or whatever the prey of the week is and change batteries and memory cards and move cameras around. It's been a blast. Brooklynn and AJ both bring their cameras and we go on walks and take "epic journeys". AJ is so excited to be old enough to be included, and Brooklynn is as obsessed as Aaron on getting the perfect shot. Aaron is always online in forums looking for better prey and better ground and better lures. Last week he said that one of the guys on a forum got good mountain lions pics by using some perfume called channel or something. I asked him if he meant Chanel, and he said yeah something like that. Now this may make me a really bad person, and you can judge me if you want, but I told him that it sounded like a really great idea. I now have a brand new bottle of Chanel no 5 in my bathroom, and I would like to personally thank "black hill Dave's" wife for being an evil genius!

I Had a Dream

Brooklynn and Aaron think alike. They always have. It's scary. They don't even feel the need to verbalize their thoughts anymore. They just assume that they are thinking along the same lines and start scheming. I, however, exist on an entirely different wavelength. Here's a good example of that. Earlier this year I had a dream. It was one of those vivid dreams that you remember everything from and it sticks with you even after you wake up. In my dream, Brooklynn had just turned fourteen and wanted to buy a 23,000.00 tie dyed convertible to drive to school. I guess we had made a deal with her when she was ten that we would match what she earned in an account that went to the purchase of her first car. She had started a photography business in order to do just that. I kept telling her that she couldn't buy a 23,000.00 car as a fourteen year old and she kept saying "but I have 58,192.73 dollars in my account". I told Aaron and Brooklynn about my dream expecting them to laugh with me about what a nut job I was. They just looked at each other. They didn't even say anything. Now two months later Brooklynn has upgraded to a better camera, and taken hundreds of pictures. She's working hard to be a better photographer every day. Aaron has started a website and a Facebook page and is taking Brooklynn out everyday almost to help her to take pictures. I am biased I'm sure, but she's really talented, and I'm not ruling out a tie dyed convertible argument in my future.

Nebraska Stock Photography's First Event

Aaron and Brooklynn shot their first event together on Sunday. They went to shoot a trials bike event. They had a blast. They had shirts embroidered and everything. I told uncle Rich that if I wanted to buy new shirts to get family pictures taken Aaron would look at me like I was on crack, but getting shirts custom made to take pictures in - that makes good sense. They drove Sunny, which was fun in and of itself, and got some great pictures. Brook had so much fun watching the riders and there even was an 8 year old competing so Brook thought it was really cool.

If 3 year old boys designed cars

My truck died this week. Seeing as it was 15 years old and had 180000 miles on it I shouldn't be surprised, and yet it came as a shock none the less. So we bought a jeep liberty. It's nothing fancy, but I figured the kids would be impressed. Brook was appropriately enthusiastic. AJ on the other hand immediately started grilling me about the cars features. I'm always floored on how much of a boy he is. Girls ask what color it is, boys ask all sorts of things that girls just don't know the answer to.  They are born like that evidently. So first he wanted to know if it played movies. It doesn't. Then he wanted to know if the stereo can play music from his iPad. It can't. Then he wanted to know if he could sit in the back seat (this is what is commonly referred to as the third row). It doesn't even have one. And then...he asked me if it had a potty chair. I told him that I didn't even think that they sold cars with potty chairs. He shook his head at me like I was the saddest excuse of a car buyer that ever existed. We rode in silence for the rest of the way home. I think that he was giving me time to think about my actions. So, watch out, new in 2033, built in potty chairs come standard.