I'm taking the plunge! Today I operated my camera completely by myself - well, I cheated with some help from the light meter, but that's it. That's an exciting accomplishment for me (usually I shoot in aperture priority mode). It was a perfectly cloudy morning. And here are some of the shots that I got
Smiles: all directed at Big Brother, of course. Thank goodness he was close.

I had my finest McGyver moment to date all of 20 minutes ago.

First the background:

A few hours after getting into our new home Guy locked himself in his bedroom. Because of that, Rob turned the door handle around. Since then, we've been using the backwards lock usefully at nap times and bedtime.

Last week, after getting home, I was getting the boys to bed for naps. Getting out of the car, a four year old neighbor boy was talking to us through his living room window. I got the boys upstairs to put them to bed. Putting Guy down for naps I often just make sure he gets in his room and closes the door behind himself (at his request). That day, he asked me to come in and look at something in his room. I went in and he immediately closed the door behind us. Enters the four year old neighbor again. I opened Guy's window (that is on the front side of the house, and started yelling for the boy. He came to the window and I asked him to get his mom. He said he was supposed to stay downstairs right then, and she was upstairs (nap time for his younger brother). So, I talked him into coming outside. From there, I got him to come into our house and unlock the Guy's bedroom door. Whew! I was so grateful. 20 minutes later Cooper was crying and I know that would have stressed me out to have him crying while I was locked in Guy's bedroom.

Later that afternoon, talking to a couple of friends, they suggested going to the self help office to get a key for the door (since we have none in the house), and putting that in his room.

Haven't gotten that far yet.

Then today:

I was putting Guy down. This time I went into the room for something, but I hadn't locked the door yet. However, while I was in there, Guy locked and shut the door with both of us inside.

30 minutes of prayers and a coat hanger I finally got out! I know, it doesn't take McGyver that long. The thing is, even with the coat hanger I couldn't unlock the door. I ended up sticking part of the door hanger in the door frame by the lock to get the door opened. That accomplishment makes me feel pretty inventive.

While I kept trying to figure out a way to get out, I would occasionally go to the window and look to see if anyone was outside. There were some painters working on a house on the other side of the cul de sac, but I was to embarrassed to call out to random men to ask for help. Thankfully, it all worked out okay.

Dad's:

Often we are still outside playing in the afternoon when the national anthem starts playing from the base speakers. When that happens, I'm teaching Guy to stand still and put his hand on his heart. After we did that the first time, I told him that we do it because we love America. He quickly responded, "Yeah! We love Captain America!"

Mom's:

Me: Guy, what does a red light say?
Guy: Stop!
Me: Yellow light?
Guy: Uh-oh
Me: Green light?
Guy: Go!
Me: Blue light?
Guy: Go Jimmer! Go BYU!

Atta boy. :)

 Rob got me a new lens for my birthday! Yeah, um, it came one week early, so he let me open it early. I know, cheating, right? But so worth not having anything to open on my birthday. It's just one more week of taking photos. The quality is as good as my prime lens, but it zooms, which makes it better (just because I don't have to move as much to get the exact shot I want. Here's some of my playing around tonight.



And then Rob played around for a bit.



He did take a few photos of the skyline, too, but does anyone else think this is funny?

This is a window just to the right of our front door. After being here a few days I knew I wanted it covered at night. I started looking around in the housing to see what other people had to block the view. Driving through one day I noticed some stained glass looking stuff. So I got on Amazon (my favorite place to shop) and searched for "stained glass window cling." Voilà! Up popped up this amongst a few choices. I was so excited to get it and now I love looking in that direction all the time.


I'd love to have stained glass windows in my home. One day I will make personally design and make my own windows. But since it's likely that it is going to be a very long time before we get to a permanent (more than three year) home, I'll make due with this great invention in the meantime.

Saturday morning we went to a Metro Park with two other neighborhood families. We all took picnics and played for a few hours. This park even had water police (really just a guy on a lawn chair with a whistle and his lunch). I should have taken a photo of the whole water contraption because it was really fun - they had knobs to turn and chains to pull to control the water flow in different places. It was a lot of fun.

Guy walks in and elicits this, no problem. Now if I could only get him to look at me. . .

It's for less than a minute at a time, but it's progress, and I'll take it. He's actually really starting to move around, too. The army crawl is his favorite but he's even trying to get up on all fours. The incentive is usually Guy's toys though I'm sure if I put food on the floor he'd take off.

are the batteries that the movers removed from things in our house before they packed. Truthfully, most of them came from toys. That would be why last year my big request for Christmas was no battery operated toys (for Guy).

Guy has most of his toys back (though I was pretty slow to unpack the majority of them), but I have only reinstalled batteries in things like clocks, remotes, and flashlights. Oh, the ball popper - that toy has it's batteries back, but that's only because shortly after we got it Rob cut the music/speaker wire -- best move ever.