making it up as i go along
I am still really loving this Instagram 365 project. It is so fun to see all these colorful photos one after the other. And dang the kids are cute!!
Favorite Ben Photo: Ben at Subway in his jimjams with Daddy (6)
Favorite Tabby Photo: love T’s 80’s hair (18)
Other favorite Photo: love the one of the skis – that was one hard secret to keep! (7)
I always have such good intentions to post stuff while I’m on vacation and it so rarely works out. We’re busy of course, but there’s also the logistics aspects … like internet connection speed. It can be enough to make you scream. Home sweet home as far as that goes. Anyhow, we’ve been gone … this week is T’s spring break so we did a long weekend in the mountains to eek out some more ski season.
This time we invited another family to join us. They are good friends, some of our camping buddies, and it’s just nice and easy to be with them. Their kids play well with ours. Conversation flows and I’m wasn’t (too) embarrassed when Ben had a meltdown in the middle of Starbucks.
We skied as a family on Friday while we waited for our friends to join us. My sister actually joined us as well which is always fun. She and the dads skied on Saturday while the moms hung with the kids. We had a great time including the Starbucks trip. In the evening, we rode the gondolas to the top of the mountain and had a lovely dinner.
The next day our friends hung around through the afternoon and then moved on to another ski resort. We stayed the rest of the day and Kelly and I skied from early afternoon to close despite the fact that it was FREEZING.
Monday we met our friends at the other ski area. Ben went to lessons and we spent the day with the older kids doing “bumps and jumps.” The photo above is the kiddos shouting “moguls!!!” after their first big mogul run (the lift riders above cheered right with them).
Anyhow, since we were with our friends, most of the photos I took this weekend (and they were a good crop) involve our friends and their kids, which of course I don’t post publicly (the above is an exception since it’s super far away and tiny and the kiddo is wearing goggles and a helmet – i.e. it could be anyone, maybe even Justin Beiber), but there were a couple of goodies sans friends.
Tabby catching snowflakes on her tongue.
Ben immediately following his Starbucks meltdown. I was so proud of him – he got himself under control in record time. He is making awesome progress.
The kids and our skis in the wagon headed back to the car after a looooong and awesome day and Matt pulling them in his scary black stormtrooper costume.
It was fun! And now back to the grind!
Yesterday, Matt and I went on a rare shopping trip just the two of us. While we were out, I glanced at my email on my phone and saw a message from iCloud, letting me know that my storage was just about full. After that note, it said, “What this means …” and I said to Matt, “I can tell you what this means. It means Ben got on my iPad this afternoon and took about a bazillion photos of himself.”
Matt just laughed. Self portraitry seems to be one of Ben’s favorite activities on our devices. The photos above I found after he’d had my Android phone for a few ticks and managed to take 35 photos of himself in about 2 minutes. I’m not saying I’d frame many of them, but a nice compilation of them just sums up so beautifully what he is like at this age: Abso-freaking-lutely adorable.
Soooooo … a few more details on Miss T’s party.
Tabby’s party was today and it was a great success! But, I don’t think I’ve stopped moving since Friday night. Mom and Dad had the kids and Matt and I worked incessantly on Tabby’s party.
We spent a few days in our favorite home-away-from-home, Vail, in honor of Tabby’s 6th Birthday (actually tomorrow).
The weather on Friday looked like this ….
So Matt and I got a re-do on our semi-disastrous date day two weeks prior. Mom hung with the kids – who couldn’t ski in the deep powder and who didn’t want to brave the snow – and we skied our butts off.
We also had a great date lunch at The 10 which is a reservations-only restaurant at the top of the mountain. We’d never tried it before, so we treated ourselves. You get to go in and disrobe, including ski boots which is a big treat because even the most comfortable ski boots are decidedly uncomfy. Then you wear furry little slippers to lunch.
The average lunch fare on the mountain is chili and fries and pizza. And actually that’s what we had too, though upscaled versions of those with figs and lamb and stuff. It was tasty. As an after, we shared this sundae. Salted caramel ice cream, brownies, chocolate sauce and candied bacon. Mmmmmm
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mom totally spoiled the kids. They had a picnic, read a billion books, painted with water colors and skipped naps. Is it any wonder we had to beg them to go skiing the next day?
The next day was super beautiful and with tons of nice snow, so we spent the morning at the bunny hill with the kids. Over to the left of the bunny hill happened to be a little event called the US Snowboarding Open, specifically the finals.
We watched from afar as crazy talented guys, including Benji Farrow, pictured above, did their insane tricks on the half pipe.
Back on the bunny hill, it was our Benji’s big day. After some initial regression from his victories in January, he rallied beautifully and …
Took his first runs on the gopher hill, which of course, means his first ride on the chairlift! Big time big boy!!
After Ben’s excellent morning, it was still beautiful weather, so Mom took Ben home and Matt, my dad and I took Tabby up the mountain.
It was a wonderful time. Tabby gets better and better every time we take her out and she really seems to enjoy skiing and she’s so proud of her achievements.
After our ski day, Kelly joined us and we went to dinner for Tabby’s birthday. After dinner, we came home to the cake I’d baked for her and presents.
Exhausted from two days of skiing, we went to bed early and woke up even earlier to pack up and head home.
Here’s a quick look at February. It’s a lightweight, coming in at just 28 Instagrams, but I think it’s a keeper. I am loving this project and the pretty results it produces.
Favorite Ben Photo: I just love the one of him playing around with me (11).
Favorite Tabby Photo: Love the photo of her reading – it sums up beautifully where she is right now (3).
Favorite Non-Kid Photo: Not to be narcissistic, but I like the one of JUST me (23). It is rare I actually like a photo of myself and I love this one.
On to March!
A key for posterity’s sake. Continue reading “February in Instagrams”
I did it! Month one of my 365 Instagram project is complete and y’know what? It was easy. Taking photos comes pretty naturally to me and since I always have my phone with me? Yep. Slam dunk.
Favorite Tabby Photo: love the one of her with Snowball (18), but I also love her expression as she’s headed to her friend’s party (12)
Favorite Ben Photo: his expression in the one with Loki (20) is priceless, but I love what the one of him swimming (29) represents
Favorite non-kid Photo: have to love on my Hedgie Noms canister (19)
Can’t wait to do February!!
I have a little project I’ve started for 2013. It all started when I saw a cool calendar journal on Pinterest. The originator had taken a calendar and used every little square to journal or doodle something from that day and I loved the effect! Pretty and chronological and all. But honestly, I suck at keeping journals. It’s time-consuming and my life is very hustle and bustle. But what do I do well and frequently??? Take photos. I’ve loved the cool weekly/daily scrapbooking or photo or diary projects I’ve seen on other sites.
So I hit upon the idea to make a calendar with photos from every day. It’s simple because it only takes a second to take a photo and I can toss them into the calendar whenever. Easy peasy. So far I’ve been keeping up with it really well and have remembered to add the photos every day or two. I’ve also had no problems remembering to take photos … it’s not even a question. It’s just what I do. I like this kind of project.
Anyhow, I thought about waiting until the end of January to share my progress, but then it occurred to me that someone out there in cyberspace might want to do this too, so I thought I’d show you what I have so far and share the template with you. I have set this up so that the grey spots are supposed to be used as clipping masks and they look good as well if you just leave them blank. To use a clipping mask, you paste the photo you want to use as a new layer over the spot in question, then you right click on that new (photo) layer and hit “create clipping mask.” That way your photo shows only through that grey spot – pretty cool, no? You can find a more comprehensive tutorial on clipping masks here.
The numbers, text, etc. can all be changed as you like. The fonts I used are 1942 Report for the days of the week, Pea Aimee from Fonts for Peas for the month and Myraid Pro (an MS Font) for the dates.
Here is is for download … [wpdm_file id=2] … you can download and use personally for free, but if you want to change it and/or redistribute it on your own site that you credit back to me. I’d love to see anything that comes of this.
My apologies for the extended break, but our wifi while away was absolutely terrible and I had a heck of a time getting a connection to WordPress for some reason. It was actually a kind of breaky trip in general. TV broke, my car’s battery died (light left on, below 0 temps), elevator went out. But at least all the people are in one piece!
Anyway, as we have done for a long time now, we spent the first week of the new year in Vail. We ski. We cook. We watch movies. We hang out. We read. We lick our Christmas-season-induced wounds. We have a great time. We are very very lucky to be able to do this and we cherish our moments together. We were joined by my parents, sister and our friends from Nashville. Our friends’ son is 2 and quite a talker and singer and all around charmer. It was great to see them, and everyone for such an extended period and really get to spend some quality time together.