something beautiful

This year, for the first time ever, my mom will not be around for Thanksgiving. That means my sister and I will be responsible for cooking dinner for our family gathering. My sister, having spent the first four years of her married life in a foreign country on another continent, has some experience with this. I, on the other hand, have never prepared a Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, I usually get asked to make the frozen corn, and I’ve been known to burn it. I’ve never even considered making a turkey and in fact, have often joked to my family that if I ever had to be responsible for cooking Thanksgiving dinner, we’d been eating turkey hot dogs. (At this point, you will all be happy to know that my lovely sister is taking care of the turkey – I just have to help hunt down the recipe.) I am, however, responsible for more than corn this year, so I am researching and planning, and I am determined to make something not only edible, but incredible. Right now, I’m eyeing an “easy” pumpkin cheesecake recipe on Tasty Kitchen, acorn squash (which I actually know how to make because I love it and make it on days that don’t start with “Thanksgiving”), and the Pioneer Woman’s stuffing. And fresh-not-from-a-bread-machine bread because I already know how to make that, too, and find it somewhat fun. Stay tuned for an update this weekend…. we shall see if it gets filed under Kitchen Nightmares or not.

… that Mercury is NOT the hottest planet? You’d think it is, because it is the closest to the sun, but no. It actually gets down to -300˚F at night. That’s because Mercury has almost no atmosphere to trap the heat on the side that is facing away from the sun. Add to that the fact that each day on Mercury is the equivalent of 59 earth days, and I think Mercury is making Alaska look like a sunny paradise of mild temperatures. (I only mention this because living in Alaska has been on my mind lately – I have no idea why.)  Daytime temps on the now-smallest* planet reach a scorching 750˚F, making Arizona summers also appear mild in comparison. Not that you’d want to live on Mercury anyway – meteors killed all the dinosaurs there. (OK, I made that last part up – there is no evidence that dinosaurs ever lived on Mercury.) Mercury really does get hit by a lot of meteors, though.

* Since the IAU declassified Pluto as a planet on August 24, 2006, Mercury is now the smallest planet, but we refuse to mention it without an asterisk. We are a little sore about Pluto’s demotion around here….

love, mom

Do you think they knew it’s my birthday?

No?

Whatever.

I choose to believe that the fact that the new Where the Wild Things Are movie opens on my birthday is a personal present to me.

Because I love that book.

And because I live with wild things.

When it comes to school, I am very fortunate in two ways: 1 – that we live in a state where I can both homeschool and still take my kids to elective classes at the public school, and 2 – that I live in a school district where I’d actually want to take my homeschooled kids to elective classes at the public school. With that in mind, we spend a lot of time working our schedule around the school’s schedule for things like P.E., Art, Band…  not to mention a good chunk of time in the car every day getting to said classes and back.

Which is why Mondays are so special. On Mondays, my youngest does not have any classes at the public school. And because I think there should be some cozy benefits to homeschooling – at least few totally non-academic, kid-pleasing perks that make their public school friends instantly envious when they learn of them – we have decreed that every Monday is Pajama Day.

It works for us.

And true to form, the boy is playing a new instrument this year. Which is why I will never have “so many pictures of marching band” that I don’t need to bring a camera to an event.

I’m not done going through them, but these are my first round favorites:

Carol shot this one:

Another one Carol shot:

Happy birthday, Boy! I love you. -Mom

I’ll just confess up front that these images were taken almost a month ago, and they are already “outdated” in that the girl now has shorter, blue-green hair, but what can I say? I still love them.

Oh, and I realize these socks aren’t purple. The socks she’s wearing in the last image are, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I love that she’s standing below the “dress code” window while wearing an early 90’s prom dress, bright checkered socks, and Converse, with little monster bows in her hair. She really isn’t one to conform to anyone else’s style…

This is one of my favorite images, and she would not let me post it on facebook where her friends might see it. She hates the white slip dress because it is so not “her,” but it is one of my favorites. I love that she wore it with purple checkered socks, too. I wish I had more images from this part of our session – there is a somewhat humorous story as to why I don’t, which involves a wedding photographer with a misguided idea about marketing himself, but that will have to be for a different post. Suffice it to say I barely caught this shot and wouldn’t have, had my sister not taken one for the team and kept that guy busy a minute so I could get away. My sister rocks.

I desperately need new pictures of the kids, so last night, while Tim was at church and the older kids were at Grandma’s, the boy and I went up to the beach to for an impromptu shoot. It was pretty crowded (what was I thinking? it was 80-some degrees and beautiful – of course the beach would be crowded!). We tried to wait patiently as sand-caked swimmers scooted sheepishly through our shot, but they just. kept. coming. We eventually shifted to a slightly-less-popular bench without the tunnel in the background, but the light was all wrong. Finally, I gave up the tunnel shot and we down to the beach. I realized my mistake as the boy lost all interest in looking anywhere near my camera and consumed himself with burying his feet in the sand…

Sure, he’s cute, and I can always capture the action, but once in a while – really, only once a year or so – I just want a picture where he is engaged with my camera. I tried all the tricks I could think of, but he’s been on to my ways for a while. Still… he is cute…

Finally, we made our way back up to the tunnel for one more try, but apparently, word was out about a great sunset at the beach, because a BUS FULL of elderly photographers showed up and filed through the tunnel only to stand right in my light while they waited for the sun to set. In the end, I decided it was better to be nice and have fun that to get the “perfect” shot. No sense in taking ourselves too seriously, right?