breaking rules

Generally, I'm a 'by the book' kind of mom.

Rules like:
Sit at the table until everyone is finished.
Kids in bed by 8 (or 9 these days).
No TV on school nights.
Healthy snacks between meals.

It makes me a 'no fun' kind of person, which is just magnified by my fun-loving, break-all-the-rules husband.

Maybe he's starting to rub off on me though.

While he was at work this afternoon, I decided to just up and take the kids to see Journey 2 the Mysterious Island after school! I had only just heard of this movie this past weekend...I saw a trailer, and it looked GOOD. The kind of trailer where you smile at the person beside you as soon as it's over and say, "I wanna see that."



The kids and I gorged on popcorn and soda and enjoyed every minute of this movie. I'm not sure what the critics were watching, but we were laughing and screaming and left still smiling with an exhilarated feeling. We almost had a private showing...except there was a dad there breaking the rules with his two kids.

And I have to add, I left wanting to READ all the Jules Verne books I never read growing up. Any movie that makes you want to read a book has got to be good.

I think this will be one of those days where I say, "Remember when I took you to see Journey 2 after school?" and they'll respond in chorus, "Yeah!! That was so fun!"

Katherine Hepburn got it right when she said, "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun."

We ended the night with cereal for dinner. May as well go all the way, right? This goes along with my 'eat a whole angel food cake in one day' theory....it's all going to the same place, why drag it out over several days?

This is why I follow rules. When I start to veer, I just can't help myself.

But it sure is fun.

warning: If you decide to see this movie, the previews for other upcoming movies are REALLY SCARY. (Wrath of the Titans and the Hobbit) Whoever made those choices, needs to be demoted.

photo tips from a complete amateur

First, let me qualify the rest of the post by saying, I know nothing about photography.

Looking at great blogs with amazing pictures, like this one or this one, and reading various tips all over the web have been my photography class.

So along the way, I've picked up my own little tips that I'll share here.

1. Love your subject. This is easy for me. Most of the pictures I take are of my kids. And I take LOTS of them. The more you take, the better chance you have of getting a good one. (Of course, this tip makes it harder to throw out the bad ones, too. Which might be why I have like 30,000 pictures of my kids on my computer from the last 5 years.)


2. Zoom In. This might be my own personal preference, but some of my favorite shots are the close ones. Sometimes, you don't even need a face in there. There's something about chubby little hands drawing with chalk that makes you smile. This picture was taken with my zoom lens from miles away.


Then there's this one where I was a little too close. Still a neat pic, that I didn't mean to take. Sometimes, just by cropping in close during editing, you can create a great picture. If you don't like it, you can always change it back. (Yay! digital cameras.)


3. Make them big. I guess this one is for bloggers, but I think the bigger pictures draw your eye in. And it's really easy to do. The way I do it is upload my pictures to Flickr. Then click on the share button. The drop down menu has a choice 'Grab the HTML/BBC code' Choose that. You can also choose the size of the photo you want. Mine is medium. After that, just copy and paste right where you write your text. No uploading pictures to blogger.


4. Edit your pictures. This is something I am REALLY unqualified to talk about. I have no idea what I'm doing in this area. But it's fun to do and you should give it a try. Of course, the free photo editor I use is about to disappear (picnik) so I may try this one sometime soon. Anyway, editing can make your picture look old, brighten the colors, change it to a black and white, and improve the quality of a bad picture. If nothing else, I usually 'auto fix' my photos. I use my own eye as judge. If I think it looks better, I keep it, if not, I change it back.


5. Rule of thirds. I think one of the most important 'official' photography rules is this one. Basically, your subject should be off center. You can also achieve this by cropping your photo.


6. Don't use the flash. This might need to be rule number one. And it will take some exploring to get used to. Sometimes pictures will be blurry, or low light. But there's ways around this using ISO and aperture. A good tutorial is here. My best no flash pictures are always outside, which may be why I show us outside a lot. Pinterest makes it easy to find great photo tips. This board is full of great links.
And I'll just confess right now, I used full on auto mode in some of these snow pictures. I could not get the lighting right at all, and as fast as the snow melted, I didn't want to risk not getting any good images. I just needed that security in order to relax and try some other settings. So if you want, take your AUTO pictures first, then branch out and try something different. You might be surprised at what you get.


7. Change your position. Sometimes you need to get down on their level...with kids this could mean laying on the floor. Sometimes you need to stand on a chair. I really don't do this rule too much, but I think it's a good one that will help change your perspective.


8. Be natural. That means no, 'smile, and say cheese'. The real life pictures are interesting ones that pull you in, make you feel like you were there, make you want to know more. Again, these take some getting used to. It's ingrained in us to tell them to smile, but we have many emotions that are worth capturing. Kids are real and will show them.


Thanks for letting me share these tips. If anything, it will be a great reference tool for me! Most of the pictures in this post are from our perfect snow day last week...three inches then 80 degrees a few days later. We roped up daddy and the kids had a blast, even without the hills.

sock hop

Juan Pablo put on his blue suede shoes once again for the annual father/daughter dance at Isabela's school. He said it was much better this year...Isabela actually danced with him.


I made her a poodle skirt to go with the theme. Luckily, she wasn't the only one with one on....but she LOVES this skirt. I used the tutorials here and here. It was really easy.


I've made Isabela a dress before, it took days...it was from a pattern...and once I was done, she didn't like it. There's nothing like these blog tutorials with pictures, and hints and detailed instructions....definitely much easier than a pattern.


This was the first time I sewed with elastic....the trick is to stretch the elastic tight while you're sewing it.


The scarf was just an extra piece of the skirt material...the headband Juan Pablo rescued from the goodwill pile at his work.


She's asked to wear it everyday to school since...I think that's a good sign.

batman

been taking care of a sick baby.
hopefully he'll be back to his crime-fighting ways real soon.

V-day, take two

Our morning out lead us to the mall, full of stores that I no longer recognize. I don't think I've actually been inside the mall in a year. We happily followed Diego's wandering trail from ride-on car to ride-on car without a quarter in our pocket.

But yay! to Qdoba for adding a little spark to our date. They have a special today... buy one, get one if you kiss somebody. Kissing in public...wow, I think it's been awhile! :) What a great meal.

I headed home after that with a sleepy Diego and was able to finish all my valentines.



And crepe paper up the kids' doors.

They're gonna love it.

Juan Pablo's valentine has a cute poem I found in Spanish. Some are way too deep for me, but this one was short and sweet.

For a glance, a world,
For a smile, a heaven,
For a kiss, I don't know,
What I'd give for a kiss!
(Gustavo Adolfo Becquer)


Happy V-Day, times two!

valentine's day fizzle

I started February off with a great bang.

I had found this cute idea to give Juan Pablo 14 days of valentine's leading up to the big day. I've never really celebrated V-Day. I Just thought I'd try something different this year.

One of the days involved me waking up early and making cupcakes. Another was a jar with 10 reasons I love him...(and I was happily able to find ten.) His favorite was the "how's about you give me a shot this valentines" attached to a nerf gun. He said it was the best present he'd ever gotten.

Well, the last three days I've been too busy and too tired to leave any little treats or notes behind. I'm not sure if he even noticed. I mean sometimes I left them in front of his face, and he never even saw them. Plus, I'm pretty sure gift giving is not one of his five love languages.

Then I had great plans early this morning to block the kids' bedroom doors off with red crepe paper...I've always wanted to do that...so they'd have to break out of it to get out of their rooms. But Diego woke up at 4:30am and when I got him back to sleep, I decided to just sleep myself.

I did make muffins for breakfast and heart shaped sandwiches for their lunch, but I didn't finish their valentines cards and Isabela was disappointed.

I guess when you say you're organizing your time better, this is bound to happen.

On a brighter note, Juan Pablo goes in late today, so Diego and I have the whole morning with him. We're going to turn this day around!

Happy Valentine's Day!

inferno

Quick update to the fire post I just wrote about.

Life is so full of lessons. And sometimes you're not sure which lesson you're learning.

Did you ever read the part in the Bible about God leading the people of Israel by a pillar of fire by night? It's quite possible we witnessed this last night.

I had finally finished cleaning up a bit inside and decided to take Diego out with me and sit by the warm fire Juan Pablo had been tending.

He loves to fill me in on how many leaves and dead trees he's burned, so he told me he had just burned one of the bushes we had pulled (two years ago!) and I glanced at the fire and didn't see a trace of it.

Me: "Wow. It's completely gone."

JP: "Yeah, it burned really quick."

Me: "Burn another one. I want to see."

Ooohh, I wish I'd never said that.

He goes over and drags back one of these huge, twiggy, dried up bushes that have been sitting out there so long, they've become part of the landscaping.....and he throws the whole thing on the fire. The reason we pulled these bushes up in the first place was because they were TOO BIG. So this giant dead bush is now spilling over the edges of the ring by several feet, and it's mounded on top of the fire about three feet. Juan Pablo is stepping on the root ball to keep it steady.

I watch its spindly branches quickly light up and then my jaw drops open as a blazing pillar of flames shoots about thirty feet in the air... taller than our house. The flames are racing up like someone poked a wide hole in the ground, and a geyser of hot lava was trying to escape its years of captivity. Diego was sitting in my lap saying, "Oh my God." I was frozen in my seat, unable to take my eyes off of it, but repeating, "I'm scared." The winter branches of nearby live trees were in my line of sight, and I could only imagine them catching fire and the whole woods flaming up. And there was nothing we could do but watch in awe and pray that it would all end quickly and peacefully.

I kid you not ....that bush was gone in four minutes flat. Juan Pablo and I just stared at each other with the most astonished looks on our faces. Really, we were speechless at what we had just witnessed.

Isabela came out just as the fire had completely calmed down, oblivious to the whole thing, "Nice fire, Dad."

Lesson (among others) learned: Don't throw giant well-seasoned bushes on your fire.

I'm just glad we didn't have to learn it the hard way.

fire

If you've seen a steady stream of smoke signals rising from behind our house, this would be why.


Juan Pablo's Christmas present from me. A fire ring. And this will go down in history as one of the best presents. Ever.


He's always been a great fire starter, except for the first time. Our one-bedroom townhouse quickly filled with smoke. The flue was open, but the air outside was so cold, it was pressing the hot air back into our house. We learned then that you need to hold a lit piece of paper up the flue to get the current flowing in the right direction.

But the ring is SO MUCH BETTER. It's gotten us outside for hours at a time. It's helped get rid of mountains of leaves that still clutter every corner of our yard. And look at the kids just chattin' round the fire. I've NEVER seen them do this.


Juan Pablo got wise and started filling our big, blue, unused baby pool full of leaves to throw onto the fire. The fire roars up and sends little sparks floating off into the air, fizzling out in a few seconds.

Every now and then, he gets a little too enthusiastic, and turns our warm fireside into a giant bonfire.


Last night, I was reading a little local newspaper we get in the mail each week. It said the State Fire Ban goes into a effect February 15...no burning after 4pm. I told JP, "It's a good thing we get this paper!" He replied, "It's a good thing you read it!"

puddles and shadows

Well, it started out with a HUGE downpour and blustery, wintery winds. Outlook not so good for us to skip over winter this year. But sure enough, the sun came out and we were able to do this:


Our yard and driveway have some great holes for rain puddles. There's also some tiny ones that always sneak up on you when you're chasing the kids around the yard...they make you almost twist your ankle as you fall to the ground, so watch out for those.


This one might make a great ice skating rink if we get any really cold temperatures.


I've been doing much better at balancing my time lately. I've started working part-time (just a few hours a week), the house is straighter, I'm still hitting the gym, and I even had time to put up a bulletin board at the kids' school and do some crafts with Diego. I credit this to leaving Facebook...and this is from a self-proclaimed non user of it. I can only guess that reading what other people were doing wasted my time and motivated me to do less. I do still wonder what everyone is doing, which is weird. I never thought about it before, and I imagine it will pass with time.


Diego thought his 'guys' might like to take a dip.


Joaquin was never really into action figures...but I'm thinking Diego might be getting some for his upcoming birthday. Yes, THREE is right around the corner.


Diego had an observer while he was splashing around in the puddles. At one point, Kitty had jumped down on the side mirror and had her paw outstretched.... claws and all.... trying to brush Diego's hair. He was oblivious to it. Whenever we go outside, she always appears out of nowhere to tag along and play. I love that about her.


I set up the timer on the camera just so you could see how I spent part of the day. Chillin' in the porch swing. Nothing better.


So it seems the little fellow saw his shadow after all. Doesn't he always see his shadow?


I've been a real slacker in the craft department with Diego lately. So we did two to make up :)

I was shocked at how well he cuts! I've been letting him play around with scissors and cut scraps of paper, but nothing with lines on it. He was able to stay on the line I drew and was all smiles when he opened it into a heart shape. And this boy can glue, too! I taught him by saying, "Squeeze, dot, squeeze, dot, squeeze, dot" so he squeezes it while it's in the air, then carefully dots it onto his paper. This groundhog was supposed to be just a head, but he was having so much fun he wanted to add a body and feet.

Happy Groundhog's Day!!