Ballerina Girls

Brooklyne has her gymnastics recital tomorrow, so we HAD to try on the leotards tonite.... where do they come up with this stuff?!

It takes HEART to be a HERO

Most of you are familiar with Tristan and her heart story and the courageous times she has undergone surgery. Tristan is now 6 1/2 years old, in Kindergarten, and LOVING every minute of it!! For the first time ever she gets to participate in something called "Jump Rope for Heart", a program that teaches children healthy habits, ways to prevent heart disease, and helps fund programs and research for those with Congenital Heart defects.

Tristan has assembled a team, to raise funds and awareness for this cause!

Please consider donating to her team (ends 1/23/2014)

by visiting her team website 

http://jumphoopsswa.kintera.org/tristansheartstory

If you want to read about Tristan's story, and our families' journey with her, you can do so here

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/tristanaryazufelt
http://www.mhschildrensheartinstitute.com/stories.htm

Tristan will most likely have to have another surgery soon, and yet another as she becomes an adult. I hope that the many medical advances we have will help her be in our family for a long, long time!

Kids Spring Pics

If you're following along with my bi-yearly posts... then you'll enjoy these spring pictures I took of my kiddos. I kinda spent quite a bit of time preparing their outfits, and being really proud of how dynamic they were looking... and yet I felt like the kids were everything BUT nice when we went out to our secret grove to take these. Precisely why I gave up on photograph so many years ago, it began to be more stress than it seemed it was worth.

With my love for photographing other people, my joy has come back to taking great images of my own children, I feel like both they and myself deserve to have fabulous photos of them.... Well, my camera can only take it so far.... these little boogers had a hard time being nice and smiling... but this is really my life. 

3 out of 4 isn't bad... right? ha ha!!! Just before I did these photographs, I purchased an adorable little Diana camera, I LOVED it as a prop, but also have thought how fun it would be to shoot some film every now and then and play around with it. Anyway, here is the adorable camera in use as a prop, I love it, and every kid that i have let use it, has loved it also.

I don't even know what to say about Brooklyne. She's just plain cool. Period. 

Oh. My. Gosh. This little boy absolutely melts my heart. I know it might not be fair to the other kids... but seriously, never a day goes by that I am not loving on him and squishing him. Is it bad to pick my favorite?

All I can say about Tristan is that she may be the biggest trial I face in my life.... and yet, when she is happy... I know no greater joy. 

She totally picked out that hat. I had nothing to do with it. She loves it. I think it's adorable. Dad hates it. ha ha!! It is just SO "Madison".

a little Disney

As much as I am disliking early church, I am enjoying that I have the rest of my day to rest, or hang out with the family, or um... work on some personal pictures:) I was sifting through nearly 1,000 images from our recent trip to Disney World and TJ asked if I would blog them... hello? Doesn't he know I haven't blogged in like years? or months? Or some ridiculous amount of time? I suppose I should though. Well, actually I'm not sure why, who even reads stuff here? It's all on facebook now.... so this is just a duplication, maybe I'll put a little extra commentary in over here;)

So, here's a quick-ish blog post using just the pictures that I randomly selected and posted to facebook. It'll do for now, if I ever make it through the other 982 photos, I'll post more here:)

Our trip: We wore matching shirts. Every. Day. it's true. Or well, mostly true. We travelled down on the same airplane, wearing the same shirts. it was cute. It attracted a lot of attention. There were 24 of us. 14 of them being children. 4 of those children being cute. or under the age of 3, that makes the automatically cute, right? Anyway, Every park we went to Grandpa requested that we all took a group photo, in our matching shirts, to start the day off right. I'm glad he did. We may have all thought he was kooky at the time, but now we have all of those photos and I don't regret a moment of it. 

This first photo is all of us piled on to some car we commandeered at Magic Kingdom. Did I mention people thought our shirts were cute? it helped us get away with a lot of stuff. The cast members were thoroughly entertained by us!

Melt my heart, this boy loved meeting the characters! I think I have 100 photos of him hugging on Characters' legs, etc! So adorable! This particular morning we actually ate breakfast with Chef Mickey {along with Chef Minnie, Chef Goofy, Chef Donald and Chef Pluto} it was super great. The breakfast was good, I loved the miniature Mickey shaped waffles. Why oh WHY did I not get a picture of them? loved them. And then we got to meet and greet each and every character at our table, it was a lot of fun.

Gah! This little boys' dreams have come true! Not only did we JUST ride the Buzz Lightyear ride, were we get to shoot laser guns at Zerg and rack up thousands, hundreds, tens of points! When we came out Buzz was right here, ready for us to greet him! Austin gave him the biggest hard plastic hug ever! and when he was all done greeting him, offered up a cool three-year-old high-five! it was priceless!

Dinner experience #325: Lunch with the characters from Disney JR. there were only 2 things that made me sad at this days' luncheon, one that Jo-Jo {from Jo-Jo's Circus} wasn't there. and two that my children have grown up so much and don't watch Disney JR. anymore, but have traded up for Disney tween shows :,( But it was a fabulous blast from the past, singing the Rocket song with June and the Handy Manny tune, also the song from Special Agent OSO (cuz he's oh so special... ;)

We scheduled some slightly wacky meal times, but this one absolutely paid off! We had lunch at nearly 2pm, but we were like the ONLY ones there, and did I mention how cute they thought it was that we all had matching shirts? Oh, yea, I may have;) so the Characters just stood around my kids, and when music would come on we would all start dancing. I'm honestly not even sure we ate much there, because we were WAAAAAY too busy dancing with the Characters!!

I have like a 1,000 more pictures of the Finding Nemo performance. It was so spectacular!! Every scene I thought was the best and so I just kept on taking pictures of them, it was sooooo great! I am always impressed with how magical Disney makes all of their stuff.

In closing, a shot of the castle. We did lots of days of disney, and I have plenty more photos to share about all the other fabulous things we got to see and do, so I'll probably have to spend a bit more time and organize them in to some sections so I can really tell the whole story. For now, a little taste of what I *hope* I'll be able to follow up on, and actually complete, for my dear husbands sake;)

Some fam pictures

So, way back in November or December, I can't remember because it all blurs together..... we actually had our family pictures taken! I know, crazy, right? Well, I took the pics of the kids and then my super cool friend Mandy took the pictures of all of us, or, well, any that I was in;) I am super in love with how fabulous they look! I spent a long time gathering the necessary clothing pieces for this event, along with jewelry, hair bows, well, you know, all the pieces. It obviously didn't go super great, because that's how things with children work out. The day that this was going down, I was honestly wondering why people PAY me to put them through this amount of torture! I mean, seriously, picking outfits, hair cuts, hair styling, make-up, fussy kids, oh boy, it's a crapload of work. But I don't remember an ounce of that when I look at these pictures now. I am just SOOOOOO glad that I have a great picture of my kids, I look back on older ones and cannot believe how grown up they are looking, and how much they aren't babies anymore! 

Adorable little Austin, he's 3 1/2 here, and he's just as boy as they come. Well, except he LOVES to give hugs and kisses. seriously, he'll kiss you to death, it's hilarious! he kinda takes after his dad and has a love for all things cars and comic heroes. But also holds a special place in his heart for Toy Story {I'm pretty sure he got that from me;)} and he can settle for other cool things like airplanes, robots and dinosaurs.

FYI- that's an ACTUAL picture of all 4 of them, they haven't been photoshopped or cut and pasted in, all 4 of them actually sat there and kind of looked at me, I think Madison is still looking at the plane that flew over, but that's a minor detail;)

This big girl of mine is 9, Madison, is in the 3rd grade, and loves girly things, watching cartoons, anything artistic, especially drawing! She's doing pretty great in school, she takes 5 hours a day to do her homework, which we have just gotten used to now, she doesn't mind being slow, she'd rather be meticulous.

I have big plans for these pictures to hang in my home somewhere, but I can't decide what kind of prints or canvas i want.... etc, etc..... Man, I'm glad I can help other people pick this stuff out, but I seriously need someone to help me!! ha ha!!

I adore the kids in this family picture. Especially Tristan. She looks thoroughly entertained by whatever is going on!

Just me and my guy. I can't believe that we have been married for SO long now! Ha ha!! I think that's something that you say every year longer you are married! 11 years ago we decided to make our best friend our spouse. Something that we had already planned on for the 2 years previous, but when TJ asked me to marry him (for like the 5th time) something finally seemed right and although my answer had always been yes, that last time was more like a 'yes now, for real' type answer.

Oh this sparkly little gem, what in the world would I do without some Tristan in my life?? I mean seriously. One of my friends here calls her "Spicy" and she IS. With as much love and happiness she brings me, she also has equal amounts of trial and struggle. She is hands down, my hardest child to deal with, get along with, teach, discipline. And she is also hands down the one that I get the MOST joy out of getting to wrap my arms around her and hug her. It is such a blessing that we still get to have her in our lives, and I forget that when she is so much work, but I remember each and every time I get to love her! She has been going to gymnastics and preschool two times per week, in preparation for starting Kindergarten soon. She is so excited to start school, and I am excited too (did I mention what a load of work she is? ;)

Ah, Brooklyne is like a breath of fresh air! Seriously. This girl is ALWAYS glad to help, loves to clean and help cook. She is super active, and loves to be outdoors. She spends most of her days on the tampoline, her bike or playing with friends. She completes her homework in like 5 seconds so she can get on to more fun stuff. Also, she is SO funny. She is the one always thinking of sarcastic-ish things. I really blame her kinder and 1st grade teacher for that super cute trait;) But she is just a joy to have around.

There is this Texan tradition of taking pictures amidst the forever fields of wild bluebonnets. They really are a spectacular beauty that pops up in the spring when we have had enough rain. However, in the near 7 seven years that we have lived here, we I have not ever made myself take the kids out and take said pictures. This year I suppose is different for us. The kids are finally a bit easier to take places, especially wide-open fields that they could run away in.... But also, it's different for me, having spent so much time taking pictures for others and even of my own kids, I really am enjoying it more than I have in past years. 

However, that alone did not mean I was 100% stress free on this little outing. It was trying, to say the least. However, it is DONE. And I have this age and stage of theirs documented, and now if I want to make a second excursion back, well, that's just up to my own craziness! For now, these will suffice. I think I'll try our second outing at a different location. Maybe more bluebonnets of these kiddos next year.... by then I'll have the energy, right?

I really love this little guy. He FUNNY. Seriously, funny. He is learning to talk SO well, he talks a lot, and we understand about half of it, well, scratch that, we understand about all of it, but I bet "outsiders" understand about half of it! He loves to pee in the potty, but only does it right before bath time. He loves his friends and loves to play. And he is SO boy. But, like, nice boy. Somehow he knows he likes cars & trucks and things that growl. But he also severely loves to give people hugs and kisses. Heck, he kisses on my visiting teachers when they come over, it's adorable!!

 And THIS little girl.... she is nothing short of a whole handful. I really should have expected this. And heck, I know it now, and I really should remember it!! But on the flip side, for how awful she is sometimes, she makes up for it in pure sweetness. She doesn't usually do so well for pictures, but I beginning to learn, I believe it's in group pictures. When it's just her and she's the star of the show, she does so much better!! She loves to try and keep up with the older girls, sometimes she thinks she wants to learn to ride a bike, and sometimes, she doesn't. She goes to gymnastics preschool and LOVES it. She really needs to start school, but I guess we have a whole other year of being at home, better bunker down and get used to it!!

How is it that something can make you ridiculously crazy, and ridiculously in love all in the same moment? That's what these kids do to me. Taking these pictures they were driving me absolutely nuts! But getting to come home, look at them, and reflect on what each child's personality expresses, and getting to freeze this moment in time, makes me fall in love with them even more!! 

Do you LOVE that awful face? I don't know why she was making a mean face at me, she just thought it was funny. I think it's funny too! Ha! And when she's an adult and see this picture, she'll think it was less than funny!! She is such a "go-get-'em" girl. She does her homework fast so she can go ride her bike. She does her chores fast so she can go play. She really knows the importance of fun time, and always wants to maximize it. It's precious! She's a great helper, and a super good do-er.

Even though this one seems like the most mellow of the four, she is definitely not lacking in personality, or personal likes. She KNOWS what she wants, and more importantly what she doesn't want to do!! However, she is such a little mother-hen. She makes sure that everybody is safe, helped, out of harms way. She just looks out for everyone, and she loves to do it. I don't expect her to, or make her, it's just the roll that she has taken on. It's cute, and precious, and HECK, very helpful!!!


It's hard to believe that we have lived in Texas for so long, nearly 7 years!! And it's hard to believe that 10 years has gone by since TJ and I decided to start our lives together! I'm so glad we have made this journey together!

Kiddos

So, I finally got a new camera!! I know, probably nobody else cares, but I purchased my DSLR 9 years ago, and although it was only recently that Nikon updated their processors to be BETTER than my model, it seems like a long time for a digital camera to remain in use. Right? I swear people I know are replacing those things like every 3 years or so. I guess I'm glad that it's last that long for me. And actually I'll continue to use it a second/spare camera. However, the last few days I have been having a good time getting to know my new camera, playing with the settings, getting it set to where I like it and want it, etc. 

The hard part is coming by a good model.... I said "good" model, not just any model;) So, here is at least one shot of each kid, I only had to bribe them with jammin' to some music. One of their favorites is "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus. In fact, more favorite that that, is this ASL video on YouTube. I have to admit, I'm very entranced when I watch this video, that guy does some amazing music-sign!

Aaaahhh... cuuuute... kids.... and mostly crazy! These crazies keep us busy around here, I'm glad to be able to take the time and take some pictures of them. Even if I think it's helping me get ready for a photo shoot, or practicing with a new camera or gadget, ultimately I took some fun, memorable pictures of them, and I'm glad for that. and I always love how much kids like to see pictures of themselves, it's always very entertaining!!