.:.:Happy V Day:.:.

Good morning everybody, and happy Valentine's Day!
Max and I had a little photo shoot with my new lens that I LOVE. He's been practicing the "I love you" sign and almost has it down.
Sorry I have to say it--he's so CUTE!

Working on it...

it's tough to hold fingers like that when you're little....

But sucking fingers must help.....

Finally, he's so comfortable he's flashing that sign like rocker horns or something.
He's one of my special valentines and I love him!!!

::Frozen no More::

We finally made it home, yesterday at about 6PM. Finally. Yesterday was a long day. Not only did we miss our connecting flight on sunday night which meant we were rescheduled for a flight monday at noon, but they also delayed that flight two hours. It was annoying. But luckily Max was safe and sound with friends, so that made things a lot less stressful than they might've been otherwise.
We were actually happy about the delay because we got to see Lisa (Kris's cousin). It was so fun to see her. She came and picked us up and took us to breakfast. It was so nice to spend some time just chatting. Let's do it again soon Lisa!

I love this next one:

Finally when we got off the flight we went to wait for our luggage. But there it was, already sitting there waiting for us! Turned out they had sent our luggage on the 8AM flight, so it had been sitting there on the bag carousel for hours, just waiting for somebody to walk off with it. That made me mad.
After that we hurried to pick up Max, who was very glad to see us, and also rushed to pick up our red car that was in the shop getting fixed. Phew.

When we finally got home we walked into the house and were hit by a blast of arctic air when the door opened. It seemed the furnace wasn't working! The house was SO COLD. I had to run straight to school to take a test (which was not fun), so Kris called the landlord about the furnace. Unfortunately they couldn't fix it last night, so after I got home we all snuggled into our big bed and slept the night under an electric blanket next to the space heater. It was nice except for Max deciding he needed to sleep sideways and kicking me in the head all night.

Getting up was hard though. It was like camping or something. I was scared to get out of bed.
Anyway, the guy came this afternoon and fixed the furnace. Evidently a bird had flown down there and gotten rather stuck. So finally Max and I were able to come out of the bedroom where we'd been holed up next to the space heater. Starting to go crazy.
I'll tell you what though, next time your heat goes out make sure you have some peanut m&ms in the cupboard. They taste awesome frozen. Yum yum.
It was almost impossible to do anything in the house when it was that cold, it was kind of crazy. Oh well. At least we're warm now.

So I have some fun pictures from our RI trip, and some impressions, I'll get to those soon hopefully!
I'll leave you with this picture. I think it's beautiful, but it makes me cold. Isn't it just so wintry and cold looking? Brrrr.....

*Stuck*

We're stuck in Washington D.C. Our flight out of Providence last night got delayed for way too long and so our connecting flight to K.C. left without us. And of course, the airline wouldn't pay for anything or give us anything good because the delay was because of weather!
But luckily our friends that are watching Max are infinitely patient and and sweet, so he's in good hands. Kris and I just got to enjoy another night at a hotel, without a 3 year old, so we can't complain.
But my email's not working right, so I owe some people an email that aren't getting them. Patience. I'll be back late today--just in time to go and take a test at school.
In the meantime here's something quite exciting. It's a picture of Kris singing karaoke. Can you believe it? Take a good long look because I've never seen this before I don't think it's likely anbody's going to see it again. I'll have to explain later.

Oh and too bad we're not stuck here longer since there are people I'd LOVE to see out here in our nation's great capitol. We're meeting up with Kris's cousin Lisa early this morning for breakfast and then flying out. Smash and Amy, next time we get stuck it's your turn.

.:.:RI:.:.

You haven't heard much from me in the last few days because Kris and I are out in Rhode Island trying to get an idea of what it's all about.
Max is staying with our good friends back in KC, and seems to be having a great time--enough of a good time that he hasn't bothered to ask for me. Oh well I guess.
Here's a picture of Kris on the coast.

We're getting a better idea of places we could possibly live, and how the city is. We've also gotten to know some of the residents Kris will be working with next year, and that's been really fun.
So more later!

~ M ~

Max's school studied "muh" during and after the christmas weeks (oh man, now I'm giving away how behind I am!) They did a lot of different stuff for M, and I probably only captured a small part of it. Here we go.
They talked about mushrooms, mammals, moose, mice, mountain lions and monkeys.

This is a mammal that he brought home to me. It's a giraffe in case you can't tell.

They did a lot of art projects, and here are a few of them:
"Mixing Colors" by Max


"Mosiac Art"


"Edible Marshmallow art" This is one of my favorites!!! He was so proud of it.






I hardly got any of the snacks written down, but they did have mangos, mozzarella cheese with apples, meatballs, muffins and mushrooms with rice. Yum. I wish I would've gotten to eat all of those snacks.

We're sure going to miss this great school when it's time to move!

::Mealtime at Our House::

This is how mealtime looks at our house.



Pretty much any meal. This particular meal is dinner, (applesauce with cinnamon) but breakfast looks about the same. Monkey and zebra both have to attend, and often Mama Fish is there as well.
The only unusual thing about this shot is that Max is actually sitting in his chair eating. I have no idea how I captured that since it only occurs during about 10% or less of mealtime.



He's cute though, isn't he? These are pre-haircut pictures as you can probably tell. See why I waited so long to cut his hair? Isn't it just adorable in these shots?
And how about his tail, do you like that?

I'm working up a post to tell about why we have Sock Monkey. Maybe someday I'll get it done.

*By Special Request*

So I have a pile of fun pictures from my birthday "fest" to post, but of course I haven't gotten them ready and put up because I've been using every extra moment (of which there are oh-so few) to play with Photoshop, which was one of my birthday presents. I love it and I'm excited about it and I SO don't know what I'm doing yet.
But, in the meantime I've had a special request from Kelly to post a picture I took of Max and his best buddy Isobel. This shot is from my birthday get-together. Max was being very energetic and bossing Isobel around a lot. She played along for a long time but then I think just got tired of being bossed and started ignoring him. It was pretty funny to watch their interaction. This picture illustrates how they were relating to each other that evening very well. I think it's hilarious.
I especially love the food all over their mouths.

And in honor of my new photoshop, here are a few other versions of this photo.

vintage snapshot--kind of cool, kind of weird.

this one's using some settings that are supposed to enhance portraits. I like it pretty well.

kind of an interesting muted color version. It makes Isobel's eyes look really beautiful.

another vintage version-I like this but I think it's a pretty cheesy effect. Like I should make a greeting card out of it or something. But I'm not sure what the card would be say....any ideas?

and last, a version with very saturated color. There are things I love about this, and things I don't love, like Max's cheeks looking so strange.

Obviously it's going to take me some time and experimentation, but I'm going to figure this thing out. You just wait! I'm sure I'll subject you to more experiments as time goes on.

.:.:Happy Birthday to Me:.:.

Since it's my birthday I figured I could get away with a slightly self-indugent post. (hah, like they're not all that already, right?)
So to start with, here's one of my all-time favorite pictures.
This is Max sometime in the summer of 2006. He was really mad at me, I can't remember why, and he made this ridiculous face. I laughed so hard. He just held the face. He held it long enough for me to run and get the camera.

And to take two pictures.

Hah! It still cracks me up. You can see he needed a haircut in this picture too. Seems to be a constant problem at our house....
And for a quick trip back in time, here's a picture of my birthday back in 1985. I was turning 5. Fabulous cake, isn't it?

Please note a very young, very cute Megan peeking into the picture from the right.
The tradition for my birthday was to have a pinata. It was often homemade. Our best friends the Williams would come over in the evening and we'd beat that thing long and hard until it broke. Sometimes the homemade ones would never break and dad would have to take the thing out somewhere and smash it for us.

Here's the one from when I was 5. I love the rainbowness of it. I also love that I'm wearing some sort of long pearl necklace. Awesome.

Here we are in 1988, when I was turning 8. Joel and Megan Williams on the left, and Charlotte's best friend Brittany on the right. I love the high noon effect of the big photographic light we had.

And this is 1992. What do you think we were all saying in this picture? Something loud I'm guessing. We didn't even bother to decorate this pinata, it's just the organic newspaper. Completely functional. I bet it was hard to break too. Joel did a pretty good job breaking them as we got older though, so he always had to go last so he didn't just break it first and bum everybody out.
Oh yeah, please note Murphy's hair in this picture. Does it look familiar?
There's much much more, but that's all we're going to see for now. You'll have to wait for my next birthday for more!!
But I'll leave you with this picture.

Remember the clarinet we saw on the sideboard in the tea party picture? Well here it is in action. Why am I kneeling on the floor to play? Who knows, but I played whenever and wherever I could. Doesn't Charlotte look adorable in this picture? What a cute smile.
Happy January! Aren't we glad that it's February now? And that's all the questions for tonight. Later! We're off to watch Lost. It's a good birthday present.

::The Cut::

Before:

After:

So now he can see, but he does still have plenty of hair. And he still has his wings which I love so much.
Kris took him to the haircut while I was in class, so afterwards because he was so good Kris took him to Walmart to pick out a "prize" He came home with this ridiculously huge baseball bat.

It's one of those really light ones. You know, I think all of us had one at our house when we were little. I'm not too thrilled about him running around in the house with that thing, but so far he's been fine. For some reason he's very interested in baseball right now which is really weird because neither Kris nor I care about it at all.

I like his haircut. It took me a little bit to get used to it, but now I recognize him (the first couple of days I couldn't pick him out of the crowd when I was picking him up from school). He's not that happy though. He was very upset about it the next morning. Shortly after he woke up he asked me if his hair had grown. Then he reached up and tried to brush his hair down into his eyes. When he couldn't he broke down: "My hair didn't grow!!! Boo Hoo!!"
So we had to comfort him somehow. When we discovered that his hair now looks just like Kelly's (Kris's brother) that really helped. He hasn't complained much since then.

It's just so funny that he's so particular about his hair. I mean, he's not even a little girl! He's just so emotionally attached to it. I do remember crying after haircuts when I was little because I thought I looked ugly though. And Kris is pretty emotionally attached to his long hair. Max must just be a silly combination of the two of us I guess. Makes sense, right?

He's still not as hairy as Sultan though, no matter how hard he tries. Sultan wins every time.

I just keep telling him that it will grow back. What I don't tell him is that when it grows back we'll just cut it again. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.