Seriously - Circles from Mom to Dad

Yep -- It all started right under my nose... The trail of dark blue colored pencil circles continued through the entire upstairs and then down the stairs... finally the little artist made it into Jake's view, and came abruptly to a halt.

Here are the paintings I was working on that made me completely oblivious to my surroundings.

"Mommy's Necklace"

16x20

Not sure what I will name this one...

11x14

The lovely mother and child in these paintings are in our ward. The real intention of my photo shoot was to get a shot of her with 2 of her 3 boys with their hands on her belly (which I did and will paint sometime soon), but the 2 photos I did these paintings from just worked out to be my favorites.

Seriously - Who Teaches these Kids Their Manners?

I don't think this is how Christmas Dinner would look if we had the manners thing down at our house... but obviously we don't.

Trey climbed on the table to stab himself some more pineapple, then proceeded to either sit or kneel on the table for most of the meal, despite Jake and my pleas for him to kindly sit in his chair.

Tamsyn kept disappearing under the table to color in her new coloring book, and Natasha who seems to be ambidextrous couldn't figure out which hand to eat with or how to hold her fork.

Maybe by 2019 we will all know a few more table manners (Jake and I included ;)

Seriously - Why Wrap Gifts?

So much for the surprise!

Natasha was cute though...

she said "At least I don't know what color it is or exactly what it looks like."

Seriously - The Vast Expanse of Love

Seriously - Egg-splosion

I don't really know how I made it to my age without ever hearing that cooking eggs in the microwave could end in an explosion.... but somehow I never got the memo.

I have been eating a lot of egg whites with my no sugar/no white flour diet, and it is much easier for me just to nuke them.  Well, the other day Trey saw me cooking mine and asked if he could have one too.  I decided the yolks would be good for him, so added the yolk from my egg to the bowl with his egg in it and put it in the microwave -- this was the outcome...

Not 30 seconds in to the cooking time and there was one of the loudest indoor BOOMS I have ever heard.  I opened the microwave to see the remains of the solo egg yolk.

Trying to salvage the other egg, (it still needed to cook a bit more) I decided it would be a good idea to pierce it with a fork like you are supposed to do with potatoes so they don't explode...

As soon as my fork touched the yolk, there was another EXTREMELY LOUD (unmuffled by the microwave this time) KA-BOOM, and that yolk exploded all over me and the entire kitchen, Trey even had some on him.

I was quite shaken up and my ears were ringing.  Trey thought it was pretty darn hilarious -- but wouldn't eat the remains of the egg after seeing how dangerous those little things could be.

Funny thing though -- I am tempted to try it again just so Jake can hear how loud it really is :)

Seriously - Too much to know

A conversation I had with Tamsyn during the course of one morning run...

I am so glad my kids have a desire to learn about new things.  It is so fun to see them soak up the information around them.  Yesterday Jake and I went to parent teacher conference for Natasha.  Jake was thrilled to hear that she is very good at problem solving :)  She is also a great little reader, and most importantly caring, helpful and kind to her classmates.

Seriously - You Can't Fool Kids

Jake got home from work to find Trey watching some cartoons and started singing along.

Seriously, what a little smarty pants!