Sunday, July 25, 2010

The many faces of us!

OK, I said earlier that I would talk about the big photo project I was working on when I was finished! I'm finished!

To make a long story short, I won a gift certificate for a ginormous photo display thingy at a webinar for professional photographers. It's actually supposed to be a big advertisement display thing for my photography business, but since I'm sort of on hiatus from the photography business, I have nothing to advertise and nowhere to advertise it so I'm modifying it a bit and it's going to become a mural on the wall in the newly redone playroom. It's ridiculously huge, 72 inches by 53 inches. It's kind of like a big poster but made out of heavy fabric, I think. Honestly, I'm not even sure exactly what it is. All I know is that it's free and I'll take it. :)

I have a big blank wall in the playroom that I wanted to do something fun with. I started out wanting to put a few cute canvases of the kids on the wall, but that didn't seem any different than what I have on the walls in the rest of my house. Then I thought I'd frame some silly candids of the kids and put those down there. That sounded better, but still not super exciting.

Then I won the big display thing and I decided to use it to do a big mural of silly family photos. Over time the idea kept getting sillier and sillier in my head, lol. I decided that I wanted to do something so silly down there that every time the kids went into the playroom it would make them laugh. Who doesn't want a playroom that makes them laugh just by walking in the door, right?! :)

So this afternoon we had a really silly photo shoot, faces were made, giggles were had by all and we came up with quite a silly creation.

Are you ready for this?!:) This is what will be hanging on our playroom wall in the basement as soon as they finish making it! :) Full size it's thirty 8x10's!

Say cheese!

I got everyone ready for church this morning and they all looked so cute that I had to take their picture. It's so difficult to get a good photo of all three of them smiling, so when I get one I have to share!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Saturday

Wow, I think this just might be the longest I've ever gone between blog posts! I've been meaning to update all week, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

Nothing super exciting going on here, just lots and lots of projects! I'm super motivated all of a sudden to get projects done that have been on my list for a while, so that has kept us busy lately!

My big focus at the moment is photo projects. We were extremely lucky to get close to 300 photos of Clarissa that were taken of her in Korea during the first 8 months of her life. Our amazing foster parents took tons of pictures and I'm incredibly grateful for them. However, most of them aren't digital, they're just prints, so my plan has been to scan them so that I have a digital copy and I can use them to make the photo books I've had on my to-do list. I started out scanning them myself, but the quality wasn't the greatest and it would take FOREVER to do so many of them, so I've found a place to have them professionally scanned and put on a disk. Once that's done I'm going to make Clarissa a story book of her adoption and a photo book of her first year.

I'm also going around and updating all the photos that I have around the house. Because I take a gazillion pictures, most of the artwork on the walls of my house are family photos. The problem is that Clarissa isn't in any of them, so I'm redoing my photo walls with updated photos. That's becoming a more complicated project than I thought it was going to be though. I'm having a hard time deciding which photos to use, how to group them, where to put them, etc., so it's a slow project. I love for my house to be a gallery of fun family memories, but I'm not much of a decorator, so executing my ideas have been tricky. It's a work in progress! I actually have a really awesome idea that I'm hoping to shoot tomorrow afternoon and once I get it designed I'll share it. It's something for the playroom that I'm super excited about!

The boys start taekwondo camp on Monday, which they're super excited about! It's from 9-3 every day next week and they're going to do so many fun taekwondo and Korean culture activities. I actually really wish that I could go with them! On Monday they're learning to write their name in Korean, they're making a Korean craft, eating Korean food and doing some other fun things. I think it's really fun for Master Lee and Mia to share their culture with the kids. I think they're having bulgogi for lunch on Monday, which is my kids favorite Korean meal, so they'll be really excited about that!

This summer is flying by really quickly, I can't believe that it's practically August already! The boys go back to school on August 11th, so our summer is coming to a close really quickly. Between taekwondo camp, house projects and school shopping, I'm hoping to cram a few fun family activities in before the kids go back to school. We haven't been on enough adventures this summer. I think we're due for one!

But for now I'm going to get back to my photo projects and see how much I can get done before Clarissa wakes up from her nap! Fun!

Friday, July 16, 2010

The tale of the taekwondo kid

I haven't posted in a while because we've been in the middle of project week. And what a week it's been!Closets have been cleaned, the basement has been painted, the garage has been dejunkified, things have been donated, thrown away and our house is starting to feel much more organized. I'll talk more about that later, but for now I wanted to share a quick video Josh took of Clarissa this morning.

Clarissa goes with us to taekwondo so she's spent a lot of time watching kids practice kicking. Lately she has started saying "hi-ya!" and kicking things, which seriously cracks me up. This morning we were in the basement working on one of our many projects and she started doing her taekwondo moves on Matthew and then bowing after each kick. It was completely adorable and had us cracking up.

Of course by the time we got the camera down there to video it she had kind of lost steam, but we did manage to capture the tail end of her taekwondo demonstration and it's just too cute not to share. Enjoy. :)

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Thursday

I thought I'd make a blog post since I'm sitting in front of my computer with a few minutes of free time, but I don't really have a lot to blog about! The past couple of days have been pretty boring. Josh has been at Scout camp and Shawn had to work late tonight, so we haven't really been doing anything too exciting.

I'm really looking forward to next week though because Shawn has the whole week off and we have some plans to tackle some projects. My mom does a special cousins camp for all the grandkids every summer, so the boys will be going to that for part of next week. Normally we drop the boys off and Shawn and I go somewhere for a few days by ourselves, but this year we'll have Clarissa with us so we decided to use the time to stay home and get some projects done instead.

We have a playroom in our basement that I have had big plans for since we moved here five years ago and I've still never gotten around to really doing anything with it. Because it's in the basement and I don't go down there all that often it's been easy for me to ignore and it always gets pushed to the back of my to-do list. But suddenly I'm really excited about tackling that room and giving it some personality.

It's kind of just a small family room with a couch and an entertainment center in it. There is a toybox in the corner where all the unused toys get tossed. There is also a toy closet down there that has toys that no one has played with in a really long time. The walls are white, I've never hung anything on the walls and it looks really boring and plain. The kids play Wii down there and they like to sleep down there sometimes in the summer but that's pretty much all that goes on down there. I think we'd all enjoy that room a lot more if we organized it, decorated it and turned it into a real usable room instead of just the basement catch all room.

So next week I think we're going to paint it, I'm going to find some cute things to hang on the walls, I'm hoping to make some curtains for the windows and we're going to go through all the toys and make a donation box to get rid of all the things that are just collecting dust down there so that the kids will be able to more easily enjoy the things they do play with. Now that we have a toddler in the house again we have a lot more toys out on a daily basis and we need a better way to organize them so I'm not tripping over them. With the boys gone for a few days and Shawn home all week I think we should be able to whip that room into shape. One of the biggest reasons we bought this house is because it has a basement, which is hard to find around here, so it's silly to me that we've never taken full advantage of it.

So that's my plan for next week. As far as the rest of this week goes, we don't really have a lot going on. Today I tried to take Clarissa outside and get some cute pictures of her and I failed to get any for the millionth time! I've never seen a kid who hates having her picture taken as much as Clarissa does! Clarissa is just a busy kid anyway and she doesn't like to slow down long enough for me to snap a few photos. I've given up trying to pose her for photos so lately I've just been chasing her around trying to get some cute candids. I pretty much just end up with a lot of pictures of the back of her head as she runs away, lol. I guess if photos are supposed to capture the personality of the subject, the back of Clarissa's head as she runs off to explore is pretty accurate.

What I'm loving most about Clarissa these days is that she's starting to talk and every word that comes out of her mouth is ridiculously adorable. She's like a little parrot, we like saying a word and getting her to repeat it. Talking is a fairly new thing for her so I'm always really surprised when she says something spontaniously. Her words are still hit and miss and she's not really putting sentences together or anything, but every now and then she'll say something that surprises me. Yesterday she looked around and said "Where's Josh?". When she's thirsty and wants something to drink she'll bring me her cup and say "please!". I never get tired of that. She says other words, like cracker, kitty, mom, daddy, hi, bye, car, uh oh, cheese, banana, no, me, and she makes super cute animal sounds. She can baahh like a sheep really well. We have a board book of animals that she loves and we always baahh when we get to the sheep page. She also barks at the dog page. She will also point to things and say "what's that?". Her voice is so sweet, I love hearing it. Tonight I was trying to get her to say "ahnyoung" which is the informal Korean word for hi. She attemped it, it was super cute! I'm going to keep working on it. I love watching her learn, she seriously melts my heart.

I just looked at the clock and noticed that it's almost 11:30, so I'm off to bed! Tomorrow is another adventure!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Two things

Worst movie based on a book: Percy Jackson. Seriously. They completely changed the entire story.

My iPod playlist of the week: The Album "Simple Times" by Joshua Radin. It's been on repeat for two days. Good stuff.

Busy day!

I wanted to get a quick blog post in today, but I've been having a hard time getting to it because I've been in the middle of various projects today.

Josh and I have been reading the first Percy Jackson book together. The plan was that we were both going to read it and then when we finished we'd have a movie night together and eat pizza and watch the movie. I started the book a few weeks ago and then got busy and haven't gotten around to finishing it. Josh read for a while this morning and got the book finished and was ready for movie night! Crap. I didn't want to be the reason that movie night got postphoned, so I spent the entire morning reading the whole book.

In the middle of that I got a phone call from a woman from church. There is a really sweet woman at our church who has cancer and isn't doing well. She requested help with a project that she really wanted done that involved designing something on the computer and I'm often the go-to person when it comes to that sort of thing, so I was asked if I could do it for her. I definintely wanted to help, so I finished reading Percy Jackson as fast as I could and I've spent the afternoon working on the computer project.

That project has taken me way longer than I thought it was going to. I'm blogging while I wait for a program to install so I can finish it. As soon as I finish that I'm going to wrap up the project and then it's time for movie night with Josh. I'm looking forward to that!

We had a fun day yesterday. Shawn had the day off and the kids were finally feeling better so we went over to a really nice park and had a picnic and then went on a little hike. The weather was amazing yesterday, it was the perfect day for being outside. We had a really fun time.

Ok, now I'm off to finish my project and get ready for movie night. I'll leave you with a picture of Clarissa, just cause she's cute. :)

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Happy 4th of July!

It's been kind of a crappy few days around here! Friday afternoon Matthew said he didn't feel well, laid down to take a nap and woke up with a fever of 102. He was so sick Friday night, I was really worried about him. He slept in our room Friday night so I could keep on eye on him and Saturday morning he was feeling a little better.

By yesterday afternoon he was feeling a lot better...and then Clarissa got a fever. She was really miserable all last night. She didn't sleep very well. She woke up feeling a little better this morning...and then Josh started throwing up.

So here we are on a beautiful 4th of July laying around in our jammies. Josh is laying down trying not to throw up, Clarissa doesn't have a fever at the moment but it still super cranky and Matthew, who is feeling fine today, is being an awesome brother and trying to cheer them both up.

I don't know what's going on around here this year, but my kids hardly ever used to ever get sick. Now it seems like someone is sick every few months. Nothing has changed, so I don't know what the difference is. I need to start setting off weekly Lysol bombs in the house or something.

Shawn was asked to do a new job at church today (Ward Clerk for my LDS friends) so this afternoon he has to go back over to the church and do some training. He's kind of like an assistant to the Bishop (I asked him if he's the assistant Bishop, which is only funny if you're a fan of the Office), so he'll be going to meetings on Sunday mornings and doing whatever the Bishop needs him to do. All jobs at our church are volunteer jobs and we usually serve for a couple of years or so before they find something else for us to do. Because they just gave Shawn a bigger job to do, they released me from my job as the secretary of the womens organization today and they're finding me something less time consuming so that we're not both busy at the same time.

So our 4th of July really isn't that festive today. I feel bad that we're not doing fireworks or anything. We wanted to do something last night but no one felt up to it. Shawn has tomorrow off work so if the kids are feeling better we're going to take them on a picnic or something fun. One way or another we'll get some celebrating in! :)

So that's pretty much it for our news today. Nothing too exciting happening around here. The next few weeks are going to get busier though. This week Josh has scout camp, next week we're going to my hometown for a family event, the week after that we have a break and the next week the boys have taekwondo camp. That takes us through the end of July and school starts back up on August 11th! Summer always goes by way to quickly.

Happy 4th of July! :)