Put Yourself in the Picture

This month's blog circle was "Put yourself in the Picture."  I took this before Christmas, but my brother got me an awesome remote timer for my camera, so in the future, I'm going to have to put that to some good use for things like this.  Now go check out how Bianca put herself in the picture.

Humanizing a Non-Human

You may or may not have noticed, I didn't participate in the blog circle last month.  I confess, potty training the twins got the better of me.  That was an adventure.  I promise a post about it sometime soon.

In the mean time, this month's blog circle theme is Humanizing a Non-Human.  (And before I forget, go check out Davina's blog.  She's incredible!!!)

Maybe I should have bowed out another month.  This one was hard for me.  When I heard the theme, the only thing I could think about was the Ikea lamp commercial.  And let me tell you, y'all came very close to seeing a bunch of mopey-lamp pictures.

I ended up going another route though, and came up with this:

I was going for a kind of creepy, monster under the bed/fear theme.  Then I realized that's not really humanizing a non-human.  It's kind of monsterising a non-human.  But fear is a human emotion right?  Does that count?  And it kind of elicits fear...maybe...  Bart says it just looks like Elmo standing in light.  He says it's scarier in black and white.

What do you think?

I took this one next:

I don't know, I think it may be more of a social-commentary-on-children's-consumption-of-digital-media picture than a humanizing a non-human picture.

And then I took this one:

Nailed it.

Mobile Phone - A Day in Our Life

So this month's blog circle theme is "Mobile Phone."  My FAVORITE thing about the camera in my phone is the fact that it is ALWAYS on hand. I love that when I see my kids doing something funny or want to take a picture of something pretty in our yard or garden, I can just pull my phone out of my pocket and click.  I'm pretty sure Instagram is my favorite app. 

So, for today's post I decided to embrace the accessibility of my camera phone and do a day in the life series.  It's going to be a long one, so if you'd rather just move on and see what Jennifer has posted, feel free.  But if not, you're in for a ride.  Here is a pretty typical day at the Francis household.  (Grandma, you're going to love this). :)

Every morning I wake up hearing the twins singing "The Itsy Bitsy spider" over our baby monitor. I don't know why, but they LOVE that song and ALWAYS sing it when they wake up in the morning.  (Which this summer has been around 7:30...much better than 6:30 which is when they were waking up during the school year.) 

 Their little exchanges before we finally wake up and get them always make us laugh.  This was today's:

Lilly: "Down came the rain and washed the spider out!"
Maya: "Down came the rain and washed the spider out!"
Lilly: "Shhhh Maya, I'm sleeping"

On this particular day, Addison decided she wanted to make the twin's beds...and honestly, who am I to put a halt to her ambitions?


When all the beds were made, we headed upstairs.  Before breakfast the girls always clear out the dishwasher.


Then we read scriptures as a family.  I have to confess, during the summer we are TERRIBLE at family scripture study.  We're great during the school year (I tell you, there is POWER in routine) but not so much during the summer.  The only reason we read this day was because Addison and Hannah noticed their scriptures as I was tidying up and begged me to let them read.

Normally Bart reads while I feed the kids, but since he had already left for a meeting, Addison read for us.  She is seriously becoming quite the good little reader.  I only had to help her with one word.  Hannah also insisted on me helping her "read" too (aka, telling her what every word was and then letting her repeat it). 



Most of the time we have smoothies for breakfast, but we were out of Bananas, so we had some peach instant oatmeal (it's known as "Peaches and Creamie" around here) that grandma brought us when she came to visit last week.  (Thanks mom!)  :)  Hannah was upset that I wouldn't let her have three bowls. Also, little tip: do your girl's hair while they're eating breakfast. It's SOOOO much easier than chasing them down and trying to get them to sit still after breakfast.


After breakfast I let the kids play and I went to check on the garden and see what veggies we were going to have for lunch.



There is something seriously therapeutic about having a garden.  Whenever I'm stressed, if I just take a few minutes to be alone and go work on the garden I ALWAYS feel better.  I love it!  Not to mention we get to eat fresh fruit and vegetables all the time.  Summer is the best!

When I came back inside, Addison was upset that none of her sisters  would let her practice doing their hair, so I told her she could do mine after I took a shower and did my makeup.


Since I was taking the picture so close and it was a relatively wide angle, it made my nose look WAY bigger than it is.   At least that's what I'm going to tell myself.  If my nose actually is that big, please don't tell me.  I'd rather go on living my life in state of naivety on the subject.

When her hair-doing craving was satisfied, Addison joined the twins playing puzzles on the ground.



I wondered where Hannah was, and as I was going into the other room to look for her, I noticed the trash was full, so I took it out and asked Lilly to put new trash bags in the bins.  Putting new trash bags in the trashcans is seriously Lilly's favorite chore. SERIOUSLY.  I'll call out and tell her I need it done and no matter what she is doing, she comes running.  She LOVES it.



And that little fact makes it more tolerable that most of the time the rest of my house looks like this:



I did eventually find Hannah.  She was drawing me a picture.



At the time of this drawing, the two words she knew how to write were "Mom" and "Hannah."  She kept giving Bart pictures with "Mom" scrawled across the top saying, "It says dad!"  I finally taught her how to write Dad the other day.  She wrote it once, so hopefully it will stick.

When the other girls saw us in the front room, they begged me to let them dance.  We have a recorder that plays a number of loud and obnoxious songs that the kids LOVE dancing to.  I finally caved in to their puppy dog pleas.  (I think Lilly had more fun contributing to the loud obnoxious music than dancing).


After dancing we had a quick game of Hide and Seek. 



At that point Lilly wasn't playing very nicely so she had to do some bedroom time (a time out).  



I always have such a hard time getting them upstairs when I need them to go upstairs, but whenever I get them out of bedroom time, they're happy to head up there leaving me in the dust. (I think they're worried I might change my mind).

After that it was lunch time.



And then nap time.

Our nap time routine always consists of changing diapers, putting them in their cribs, and reading a story.  However, when I did it in that order, I had to deal with two squirming toddlers who were trying to make it as difficult as possible for me to change their diapers because they knew they were going in their beds once I was done.  I've found it's way easier if I change their diapers upstairs and then read to them on the couch.  They don't squirm because I tell them we won't get to read stories on the couch if they squirm.  Then all I have to do is put them into bed after story time.  SOOO much easier!



When I walked into the twins' room downstairs, I found Addison like this.  She thought she was pretty funny.  The twins thought she was pretty funny too.



Once Maya and Lilly are in their cribs, I tuck them in and sing, "Love one Another," and leave.  They usually fall asleep pretty quickly, but lately they've been staying up for a long time talking to each other and I have to go in there a few times to tell them to be quiet and go to bed.   


After I put the twins to bed I read Hannah a story in her room and put her to bed.  Addison doesn't usually take naps, but Hannah doesn't like being in the room without her, so I've made Addison a deal:  As long as she stays in the room until Hannah falls asleep, she doesn't have to take a nap and can come upstairs.  She usually reads while she's waiting.



After singing to, and tucking in Hannah, I went upstairs and finally got to eat my lunch.  A Yummy Caprese Salad with tomatoes from our garden and balsamic vinegar from Olive Oil and Beyond.  If you live by Balboa, don't walk, RUN to that store.  They have the most incredible balsamic vinegar I have ever tasted. Seriously, get it.  It will change your life. 



At our house, Mondays are family night, and I knew we had to run to the grocery store too, so I decided to start a crock pot dinner.  I knew the temptation to just drive through somewhere on the way home from the store would be too great if we didn't have something already cooking at home.



And by the way, that is the crock pot I got when I went to college some 10+ years ago.  I've had others, but she's still my favorite.  I call her old faithful.  I hope she never breaks down on me.

Hannah had fallen asleep, so Addison came upstairs.  I took this picture of her on my bed thinking she was reading, but it turns out she was just playing games on my iPod.


When Bart got home from his meeting, he reminded me we had to re-register our Prius.


Then it was off to the grocery store.


And let me tell you, that was one tough grocery store trip.  Lilly had a break down so Bart ended up taking her back out to wait in the car for us.  As the cashier was ringing me up, I realized I forgot to get bread (which we REALLY needed) so I ran to the aisle to get some.  And then I realized I got not one, but TWO of the wrong type of item, so a store manager was kind enough to run to get the correct item for me TWICE.  Seriously, it was a nightmare.  It's a good thing I had that crock pot going or we would have been eating fast food for sure.

Instead we went home and had Taco Chili and watermelon.



We were originally going to go on a hike for family night, but Hannah had worn shoes that were too small for her to the grocery store and gotten HUGE blisters that popped on the back of her heels. (Seriously, it was a bad trip).  So we opted for a nice game of Qwirkle instead. 



Then it was bedtime.  The incentive for putting pajamas on tonight was that they got to wrestle with dad for a little bit.



Finally we tucked them all in and said goodnight.



And if you're still reading, You're awesome!  I'll add another link so you don't have to scroll all the way up just to move on to Jennifer's blog.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me here.  :)

Shallow Depth of Field - Ladybugs

The theme for this month's blog circle is Shallow Depth of Field.   I chose to photograph some of the four-thousand-odd new members of the family we added to our household this month:



Yep, we got Ladybugs.  You may find it odd to call them members of the family, and perhaps it is.  But these little ladies were so excited when we released them into our garden, they called them their pets, and began naming each ladybug they could catch.  And let me tell you...Ladybugs?...now THAT is the kind of pet I can handle. So members of the family they are.  :)



On a completely unrelated note, I love how my children are dressed in everything from Sunday dresses, to Pajamas, to not even fully dressed.  I feel like this is pretty reflective of a typical day at our house.  The other day I walked into the room and Maya had her shirt off.  I asked her why she didn't have a shirt on and she said, "Because I was hot."  You can't argue with that.

Anyway, back to the ladybugs.



The girls really enjoyed having them crawl on their hands.



And pretty much everywhere else.  (Did I mention there were like four thousand of the little buggars). 



The twins really had fun trying to catch them.



Lilly was relentless! Every time I moved the bag to a different part of the garden, she'd find it and try and get more.



But despite their best efforts, the Ladybugs, for the most part, wound up right where they were supposed to be, eating all the nasty bugs in my garden.



Ahh, Rosalina, Julia, Shiney, No Dot, and all the rest of you whose names I can't remember,  welcome to the family!



Now head on over to Stacey's blog to see how she captured Shallow Depth of Field.

Beautiful Ugly

This month's blog circle theme is Beautiful Ugly.  Most months I don't even start thinking about what to do until at least half way into the month, but this month within the first week of May, I knew EXACTLY what I was going to write about. 

Bart and I LOVE to garden.  Last year we even started some tomato and pepper plants from seed indoors.  They worked out so well we did it again this year.  We had about 12 Tomato plants growing under grow lights when we went to California to visit my parents for Easter.  While we were there, we went to Tomatomania  for the first time.  I was excited to go and see what kind of tomatoes they had, but I knew it was still to early to plant tomatoes in Utah.

Since the house we moved into didn't have a vegetable garden plot, Bart and I decided we were going to build our own raised beds for our garden this year.  One of our good friends in Spanish Fork had always started her tomatoes and peppers really early and protected them from the cold with a cover made out of plastic and PVC pipe.  I thought if we decided to get two or three plants to try out, we could build a similar cover and see if we could really start the plants a month early, and if it didn't work out it wouldn't be so bad because we had so many plants inside.  Well, while we were at Tomatomania, Bart caught the mania.  I think if I had let him he would have purchased every single one of the hundred-and-some-odd different varieties of tomatoes they had there.  In the end we came home with TWELVE more tomato plants!

We rapidly built our bed and cover and planted them within days of coming home.  We anxiously checked our phones every night to see if there would be a hard freeze.  There was one week where it was going to get down to 25.  Thus far they had survived a 30 degree dip in the covers, but 25 made us nervous, so we bought a little space heater to put in the beds that night.  It worked like a charm.  By the end of April, our plants had been in the ground for nearly a month and were really thriving.

The last week in April, the weather had been amazing.  It was getting into the 60s and even 70s during the day, and only getting down to the 40s at night, it was great.  On the night of April 30, I checked the weather app on my phone and saw that it was going to get down to 37.  We had put all but 5 of our inside tomatoes out there to harden off a few days earlier, but with the covers 37 was plenty high, we wouldn't need the heater that night.

I listened to the wind howling all night and was very grateful for my cozy bed.  The next morning was really busy, and it was nearly noon before I had a chance to head out to the garden.  I hurried out, worrying that the sun might be baking the plants since I didn't come out to open up the plastic earlier (it was literally that hot).  When I pulled the plastic back, I couldn't believe my eyes.  All but two of our tomato plants had frozen.  The leaves were all completely black and limp.  I nearly broke into tears.  The temperature hadn't got to freezing, but the wind was so cold it froze all of our tomatoes.

The next few days were really depressing at our house.  Our daily excursion to the garden that had previously brought us so much joy and excitement was replaced by consciously avoiding the garden because we didn't want to be reminded of our foolish mistake that crushed our best-tomato-garden-in-the-neighborhood hopes.  About four days after the frost I finally worked up enough will power to go out and check on the two plants that had survived.  To my surprise, several of the frozen plants had new growth at the bases.  I couldn't believe it.  Over the next week, every single one of the plants that had frozen had sent up new shoots.

We still lost the seedlings that were hardening off outside, but every single one of our Tomatomania plants came completely back!  And let me tell you, when I saw those beautiful green sprouts at the base of those ugly limp plants, I knew exactly what my post this month would be on.

I am happy to report that all of our Tomatomania plants are not only bigger than they were at the end of April, but they also have blooms on them.  We have planted the few plants that were still indoors and purchased replacements for the ones we lost.  We are once again excited about our tomato garden.  I think it's going to be a great summer!  :)



Now head over to Stacey's blog to see her beautiful Ugly.