New Toys

I've been messing around with my new camera and software trying to figure things out. I really need to take some classes or something, but for now I'm on my own! Here are a few of my recent shots.Anson was in a rotten mood, so that's the only decent one I got of him. I'm trying to learn how to use Photoshop Elements because I really want to learn how to make cool collages so I don't have long lists of pictures. Stay tuned!

Broken Nose

It was bound to happen. There is a bit of confusion, or rather, delusion, in Coleman's mind about exactly what it takes to do certain things on his bike. He sees his 10 1/2 year old cousin, Ethan, doing cool tricks, and he sees the videos that they watch and it all looks so easy! In his little mind he says, I can do that. So he does, and this is what happens:

Day 1, a few hours after the accident

Day 2

Day 3

Day 3, showing a new injury

Day 4, back at home

Unfortunately, he had decided to remove his helmet, his full-face dirt bike helmet, just before the accident. I wasn’t there and Garrett was playing tennis nearby, so we didn’t see it happen. According to Ethan, he tried to go off a ledge that was about a 3-foot drop, with a curb at the top. So he hit the curb and went right over the handle bars to the ground below. He didn’t have any scrapes on his hands, which tells me he took the full brunt of the crash on his face. His doctor thinks his nose is broken, but we had x-rays taken today to make sure what is going on. Hopefully nothing is wrong inside so we won’t have to see an ENT.

Coleman has been really concerned the whole time about people laughing at him. The pictures don’t seem to show how funny he looked the first couple of days. His nose was so swollen. He didn’t look like his normal cute self at all. Maybe this one shows it a little better.

But besides that our trip to St. George was wonderful. The guys figured out that they played 8 hours of tennis and I did a lot of shopping. Many of you may say, “But Amy, you don’t like to shop” which normally is very true. However, when Dillards is having their 75% off sale and I can get all of the kids shoes for the next year, I go for it. I admit, buying 13 pair of shoes at one time is a little over-the-top, but how can I pass up those kinds of deals? I also bought myself some clothes, many of which were another 50% off the already 75% off. Come on! It’s practically free!! I can’t afford NOT to shop! We also went to the Children’s Place outlet and found many great deals. I refrained from going to any other outlets, mainly because we were out of room in the truck. Outlets are dangerous. Fun, but dangerous.

Here are a few more of my favorite pictures from the weekend.

Boy is Anson funny!


The coveted toy of the weekend, safely in Glade's hand


Ethan's mad bike skills

Ellie has been working on her runway poses lately

3 cute girls!

Show-off

I guess it's bragging or showing off, but I just had to post these pictures of the cutest cake I've ever done. I've done some other pretty cute ones, but this one is just so sweet! It was for my friend Miranda's daughter, Arden.
She was pretty pleased with it, as you can tell! That smile makes it worth the 3 hours it took me. Maybe if I did them more often I'd get faster. I don't know how anyone makes money at this! While I'm at it I'll post a couple of my other cute ones.
For my neighbor, Tanner. I also did a Nemo-shaped one for him a couple of years ago that I don't have on my computer. That was a good one too.
Cupcakes for Claire's 2nd birthday.
Claire's 3rd
I just had to include this one of Coleman's 1st birthday. He didn't know what to do with it!
Coleman's 3rd
Coleman's 5th
Claire's 6th and her cousin Sierra's 5th--that was a pretty fun one.

Coleman's 6th--Different than my other styles, but he wanted a dirt-bike track!

Changes

A very exciting day for Claire yesterday—Braces! Well, they’re not actually braces, just 4 brackets, but to her it’s braces. This morning before school she was making me practice with her how she was going to tell her best friend. She always has these elaborate plans for making announcements to her class. She’s planning to pretend to take a picture of her friend, Taylen, then have her pretend to take Claire’s picture, at which time she will give her a big grin (of course, before this unveiling moment she will have her hand covering her mouth) and Taylen will be appropriately amazed, excited, (jealous?), etc. Maybe the novelty will wear off after a few days of a raw mouth and little balls of wax.

Also, some of you may notice that she has an adorable new haircut. I love her in a bob!

I am posting this picture of Coleman also so Mom can see that we have gone back to his normal haircut. (You’ll have to ignore the fact that he was mad at me at the moment!) Garrett wanted to try another, more current style for a while, but I didn’t like it. So I cut it, and I have to say, I did a pretty darn good job! Better than 99% of the cuts he’s had that weren’t free. Of course, for those other cuts he didn’t have to stand naked and freezing in the bathtub. But hey, I saved us $10!

This picture is for the Burbidge family. Something that you are not likely to see again--Garrett fishing! A guy he hometeaches is obsessed, so we went with his family out to our little ski lakes. Of course, we didn't catch anything because Garrett is cursed (according to him) so he cursed us all. But Coleman was in heaven. His love of fishing was inherited from my side!

And a picture of the little ones when we went to the snow.