Mission pics

I love when I have a chance to practice my photography.  It isn't something that I feel I can do full time, or even part time, right now, but I love that I get asked every now and then to do a shoot.

Here are a few snapshots of one of my dear friend's son who is preparing to leave for Argentina soon.

Eden's 11th

I can't let February pass me by without blogging about Eden's birthday. I can't believe she is 11!  She has gone from this.....

To this.....

She is kind, beautiful, friendly, spiritual, helpful, thoughtful, sweet, sensitive, and sometimes a little moody.  We are so glad she is in our family.  

For her birthday she really wanted a shellac light and some Sorel boots.  Lucky for her she got both! and a few other small items. 

We told her that because the items were a little more money than what we usually spend on birthdays she would not be able to have a birthday party with her friends this year. 

But...............We felt bad and arranged to have some friends over a few days later for a SIMPLE surprise get together.  

(I just went to find the pictures I took of the party, and can you believe I didn't take one Picture??)

Eden had been out with her grandma shopping for a present and when she came home, thinking that she had to babysit, her friends were waiting to surprise her.  Although, she didn't act as surprised as I thought she would. I expected screaming and yelling from excitement and all we got were a few smiles and a look of confusion. "so what? I don't have to babysit?" was all said.

They had pizza and cake and played a few rounds of bingo with some super lame prizes, but they loved it.  After the raging bingo game they watched Nacho Libre.  In the end I think it turned out to be a great birthday for my sweet Neenie!

Birthday festivities:

Breakfast: crepes

Lunch: Kneaders with Mom, Dad and Ainsley

after school she rushed off to gymnastics stayed there for 2 hours instead of 3. 

came home to her dinner of choice: Chicken Alfredo (which was cold because we had to eat before she got home from gymnastics because Cache had YM and Asher also had gymnastics)

dessert: cupcakes and a birthday song sung to her by me and Ainsley since we were the only ones home. (good thing we had that party because her birthday evening was a little sad)

helper

I miss my blog.  I really do. It is such a great way to document our family.  I refer back to it so often.  I hate making goals, I fail way too often.  But I want to do better. Do I dare make a goal to do better on my blog? My stomach twirls just thinking of saying it out loud (or publicly documenting it). But here goes nothing......my goal is to blog more than I did last year. oh wait......I only blogged 8 posts last year? Well this goal shouldn't be too hard then :)

I had to make cookies for our Great To Be Eight program in primary tomorrow and Ainsley wanted so desperately to help.  I am horrible and I cringe a little when my kids want to help in the kitchen (or in the laundry room, or with crafting, or with washing the car) I wish with my whole heart that I savored those moments with my kids to teach them these necessary skills, but it just takes sooo much longer and creates such a huge mess. I was ready to tell her to go watch a show when I realized how much TV (is it considered TV if it's on the iPad?) Ainsley had been consuming this last week (massive amounts) I relented and accepted her help.  It went okay, it was a mess and it took so much longer than it should have, but now, at 11:00 at night, and looking back at the experience, it was fun!  She rolled the dough in the powder sugar for me (we made these delicious and easy cookies) and even though she was doing less rolling and more squishing I pushed aside my annoyance and let her go at it.  She did about 6 cookies and then was distracted by the batter bowl.  I let eat to her eat up while I quickly finished the rest of the cookies.  

"no more pictures, until I put more lipstick on"

note to self: Make a goal of letting your kids help in the kitchen more.Time flies way to fast and I will miss it someday, I know I will!