School Pictures 2014

It's hard to pick the very best ones when you have 6 kids and you take about 20 pictures of each kid.  After a while, they all start to look the same.  But here are some of the ones I liked best.

I hung my backdrop on my living room doors and threw open the front door for the natural light (a wasp flew in the house this way.  ooops.)

I don't actually know how to operate my camera much beyond "point and shoot" and it's kind of "cheap" so it randomly changes the filter or something so you get pictures that are darker or more vivid or more washed out all in the same point and shoot session.  (Which could be partly the natural light changing outside too.  I'm not sure.  But at any rate, here they are.  Feel free to print up some you like or whatever.)

Isaiah's sleeves pulled up funny on his arms.  That or the kid is outgrowing all his clothes.  :P  I'm not happy with the full sized results, but I like the close ups of his face and shoulders.  :)

He's hard to catch with a real smile though.  He does this most of the time when I take his "formal" picture.  

I love this little smirk.  He's so funny!  :)  

 

I actually like the way Jubilee's turned out best.  The colors are all so nice, crisp, and vivid and they all seem to match well.  I don't know what it is exactly, but hers from this series are my favorites.

(This smile reminds me of Sarah for some reason.  I LOVE this one best of Jubilee's even though she's smiling better in another picture.)

Madeleine looks like she's saying, "What's all this fluffy stuff for?  Can I eat it?"

Looking at all the siblings who wouldn't stay put in one place.  hahaha!  

I didn't like the look of the green sheet next to her green pants so I added the fluffy skirt above, but I didn't like it either.  She's got a cute smile but the outfit and/or colors are wonky to me.  hahaha

These are probably the ones I'll print to replace last year's school pictures hanging on my office wall. 

The some side-by-sides to show how much can change in a year.
Maybe it's the haircuts or maybe it's the clothes...I'm not sure what it is, but the big girls both look like they grew A LOT in the last year.

To me, I don't see as much change for Isaiah or Noah in the last year as I do for the girls.  They seem the least changed out of all the kids to me in these side-by-sides.

 

Of course she changed a lot.  Got a ton of hair, grew a foot taller... but same smile here.  :)

And since this one wasn't around for pictures a year ago (or rather, her pictures were all black and white, grainy, and taken on an ultrasound machine...) here's one for her from about a week old and now to compare how much she grew.

Why can I never think of a good title for these?

 I always load the pictures the same way.  The blog then decides if it will put them in order for me or not.  This time, I guess it decided to stack them newest to oldest.

I got my haircut.  This is the before picture.

I'm pretty excited about it because Maddie was always spitting up on it and ripping it out by the roots and getting it tangled up in her fingers and ....

 Madeleine's face pretty much sums up what she thinks of the whole ordeal though.

 "I used to love to hod a big handful of that stuff and put it on my face when I was sleeping on Mommy's chest."
"I came out of her tummy and pulled it first thing."
"It's always in my mouth."
"Whatever will I do without Mommy's hair????? She might not even be the same Mommy anymore!"

 "Who is this crazy woman?"

She really has been acting strangely with me today, so I'm guessing she's not so into the haircut.  Hahaha

Trying to get a picture to show how much red is in her hair in the right light.

Cute brothers

Working puzzles

(and now it's back to oldest to newest...these come right after the swimming pool ones on the last post.) 

 Jubi dressed herself, in case you are wondering.
They were having a conversation like this.  It was cute.

 How I found him after the swimming pictures I put on the blog last time.
He tired himself out.

 Playing in the rain.  I never let them out in the rain.  I'm afraid of lightning.  But there came up this HUGE down pour out of a blue sky and I guess I figured lighting was less likely.  Anyway, I told them it was okay just this time to run in the rain.
(I didn't realize there was a big drop of water on the lens.  ooooops.)
The raindrops were like golf balls.  It was a very weird rain.

 Isaiah and Noah thought I was crazy for letting them run around in the rain. They were terrified of lightning.  Jubi just thought she needed to stay with her brothers.

While Brandon was gone to California, I redid the living room.
(It took me entirely too long.  All those cords are a headache.  I think there are like 50 connections I have to make in the right places for it all to work.)

Our swamp cooler broke while he was gone.
It was about a million degrees in the house when it broke.
I knew what was wrong with it pretty quickly.  The pump wasn't working.  I prayed, "Please God, let me fix it or let it cool off in here until I can fix it."
I had checked the 10 day forecast that morning...because of the swimming pool...it was supposed to be 98-102º every day for those 10 days.
Something like 4 minutes after I prayed that, the sky got dark and overcast and it rained or was cold or was overcast for the next 10 days straight.
We were actually FREEZING with the windows open.  I'm not kidding.  It stayed in the 60's and 70's the rest of the time.

I also went through our bookshelves for the millionth time.
And our clothes.
This is what Maddie did a lot of the time I was sorting out the stuff they had outgrown.
(actually, in this picture, she had pooped and I went to get her a new diaper from downstairs and when I came back, she was asleep.)

I pulled these dresses out and Jubilee insisted she and Madeleine needed to wear them right at that moment....on top of their other clothes they already had on...
(notice Maddie is wearing a long sleeve shirt.  It really was FREEZING in our house after that.)

Laundry another day.  Noah was entertaining Jubi and Maddie because he is too social for a movie like the big kids.  He said, "They both have a cat blanket.  They both have pink shirts.  They both have another blanket.  They are twins."

 So of course, I had to finish Madeleine's outfit to match Jubilee's.  (long sleeves again)

Isaiah had to come see what we were doing.
Laundry.  Just laundry.  I promise kid.  Nothing exciting.
That or stripping and re-making the bed.  That's also what I was doing on this day.

On our way to the airport to pick up Daddy.  We missed him sooooooo much!!!!! 

So, Brandon's plane was supposed to get in at like 6 pm.  We were there at like 5:45, driving around and around and around so we wouldn't have to park.  At 9pm we were STILL driving around and around and around.  

I was starting to get really worried.

Maddie had cried herself to sleep at least 2 times, the kids were grouchy and worried.  I don't have a phone so I couldn't call Brandon to see if he'd been delayed or call the airport to see if his flight had been delayed.  I just kept driving.  I was getting worried and starting to think, "What if his plane went down?"  It was scary.  I was singing under my breath, "For this, I have Jesus."  because I was getting too worried to handle it.

The boys had fallen asleep and Isaiah woke up and said, "Oh, good, we're at the airport."  Emma snapped, "We've BEEN at the airport."

I thought, "I'll just go to a gas station and see if I can find a pay phone..."  I even exited the airport.  But I exited into the wrong part of the city and didn't want to get lost so I made a quick loop back onto the highway and was back in the airport...so I thought, "I'll just go through the pick up area one more time..." and there he was.  Apparently his plane had been sitting on the tarmac for the last 3 hours.  :P  

Jubilee looks soooo excited to be going to get Daddy.  :)

Last year, they were all pink.  Every one of them.  I thought maybe the other colored bulbs had died.  This year, they were pink and orange and red.  My one yellow from the first year must have died though.  It didn't come back either time.

"Can I take them both to bed with me?"

Also...like on the day Brandon got back and fixed the pump on the swamp cooler and the world turned back into hot summer...on that day...the dishwasher broke.  So the kids learned how to do dishes by hand.
 (Learning this also taught them how to keep their cups from getting lost and having to find a new one.  Or how to not get a fork and a spoon for every meal.  I'm not kidding.  Overnight, they became really frugal with how they used dishes.)

Taking a nap together.

Waking up together.

Madeleine LOVES sucking on these two fingers.
If she has to self-soothe herself and can't manage to get the pacifier back in or if she just gets tired of it and spits it out, these two are the two that go in.  Maybe she'll be the first left handed kid.  She also hates it when I clip those nails on that hand because she doesn't like me holding that hand down.  She doesn't mind the other one as much.

I went to check on the kids at bedtime one night and couldn't find Noah.
He was on the floor in my room.  Complete with pillows and blankets from their rooms.  I guess he had a scary dream? 

Different day.  Same fingers.

When I shower...
She liked this until I was getting dressed and she could see me in the mirror.  Until then it was all, "Who's that baby in the mirror?  I like her!"
Jubi thought she needed to wear a 6 year old sized t-shirt.  Haha

Invasion of the giant lego dragons.  

Isaiah's really taken an interesting in reading/spelling/writing lately.

It says, "Jubi is building.  Fox  Goat" and he practiced a M, N, G, Q, F, and O while he was writing the other words.  He'd ask, "How do you spell building?" then he would write it down as I said it and for the G, he said, "Does G look like this? (Q) and I said, "No.  It's like..." and he cut me off and drew a G.  That's how the others happened too.

The scribble has a picture of Jubi building with legos.  I thought it was cute but he didn't like it so he scribbled it out.

Allergies.  Horrible allergies.  :P  I hate every season that isn't covered with snow or rain.
Everyone has been having some sort of reaction around here.  I was having a sinus headache and couldn't keep them cleared out with the sinus rinse so I had the head massager by my chair and was using it off and on.  Isaiah is tickling Jubilee with it in this picture.

Emma is pretty impressed that Maddie can hold this toy car.

Jubilee is being a mommy to her baby dolls.  She made them a bed and was holding their hands and kissing them.  

oh and THEN she noticed Maddie Mae.

My sister abandoned this next to me.  Maybe I should play with it for a while.

Noah built a dog cake.

You know you have a one-year-old when:
(I taught them how to make origami cats and dogs one day.  She has a collection of them some of which are on the stair too.)

also this: 

Peek-a-boo had had HAD to wear this outfit one day over top of her other clothes.  On top.  

and, of course, what baby could live without a blanket? 

What do you do when you can't roll over yet and your sister fell asleep playing with you?
Just stay bored, I guess.

I discovered this recipe and added it to our collection of chicken and rice meals that are easy to make.  Yummy!  Hawaiian Chicken.
 It's 4 thighs or 3 breasts diced up and browned.  Then you stir flour over that to make the sauce stick to the chicken.  Then you dice up 2 bell peppers of whatever color you want and kind of cook them a little bit with the chicken.  Then you dump in one can of pineapple chunks (with the syrup) and 1 diced up mango.
For the sauce, you mix 1/2 cup of honey, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 T ground ginger, and salt and pepper to taste and dump it over the skillet mixture.  Then you just cook it until it's all hot and the sauce is slightly thick.  Yummy!  I served it with rice but it has a similar flavor to those Hawaiian rolls and I thought, if it could be altered slightly, it might make a good sandwich on them too.  

They both had to have Kitties; Jubi insisted.

"I reading my Bible, Mom."  She said when I took this picture of her. 

In a sweatshirt Liz bought for Abby when she was something like 6 months old.
It's been well loved.  :)

I don't think she was quite ready for it to be morning yet.

Yeah...she's thinking, "Let's go back to bed."

Allergies.
Half of her face swelled up so much it wouldn't move when she smiled.  It was scary.  I didn't have any kids allergy medicine in the house and was looking at the kind I take, wondering if I could give it to her or not.  I discovered it was for kids 6 and up so yes, she could take it...AND I discovered she also can swallow a pill as easy as if she had been doing it her whole life.  Hmmm... Guess she isn't limited to children's liquid medicines anymore.  And the swelling went down pretty quickly after the allergy medicine was in her. 

Working puzzles.
Abby wanted to know if Maddie liked the Fairy tale or the dinosaurs better.  She leaned next to Maddie and held up a thumbs up and a thumbs down and said, "Maddie, do you like the dragons?" Maddie batted a hand and touched Abby's thumbs up hand.  Then Abby said, "Maddie, do you like the fair tale?" Again Madeleine batted the thumbs up hand.  Abby sat back perplexed and said, "I guess she likes them both."  Emma responded, "Abby, ask her if she likes space." 

She has red hair too in certain lights.
She loves dolls.  Can you tell?  Always the dolls.
Everywhere the dolls.
Dolls, dolls, dolls. 

Me:  Can I hold a doll, Jubilee?
Jubilee: 

Curled up in a blanket is the place to be.
She loves blankets.

Now...if only I could find those fingers on my left hand that I like to suck on.

The only time she likes tummy time is if someone is there with her.

How much does one little foot grow in 3 months?
Remember this picture when her foot was roughly the length of my finger?
Now her feet are at least 1/2 inch longer...maybe more.

It might be hot, but I still like my blankets.