New URL

I've moved the blog over to a Wordpress format. I'm tired of how time-consuming Blogger and Live Writer make it for me to create a blog post. I'm loving how the new blog looks, and I REALLY hope you'll join me over there. I've made it easy to subscribe to the blog by posting a link in the menu bar as well as the sidebar on the left, so I hope you'll subscribe or bookmark me, or whatever you do to follow your fellow bloggers. :)

Here's the link to the new blog - I imported everything from this blog, just in case anyone wants to look up an old recipe or something. ;)

www.adventuresinmunchkinland.com

Hope to see you soon!

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Easter

I know I'm really late sharing these, but I've been busy making headbands and editing other sessions, and my personal pictures have fallen behind on the priority list. These pictures are clear back from Easter.

Easter was really nice this year - Sasquatch's mom was here, and it was wonderful to be able to share a major holiday with family. The girls were a little bit spoiled - new dresses, new jammies, and a couple of new toys for each of them. The Princess received a book/CD called "The Composer is Dead." The story was written by Lemony Snickett, and the music is done by the San Francisco Symphony - I HIGHLY recommend it if your kids are into music - it's a great way to introduce kids to various musical instruments, and the writing is hilarious.

We were invited to dinner with several other families in the ward, and it was so much fun to spend time with friends on Easter. One of the things I miss most about being back home is the fun holiday get-togethers where the girls get to play with their cousins, so it was great to be able to spend time with a big group of people - it helped me feel a little less homesick. I'm so grateful that we were invited.

The munchkins all participated in an Easter egg hunt, which was lots of fun. The Princess was too busy hunting for eggs to let me take pictures of her, so I followed Sparky around instead. She refused to look at the camera, but it was fun to capture her first experience hunting for Easter eggs - she thoroughly enjoyed picking up the eggs and putting them in her bucket - she had to look in the bucket every time she dropped an egg inside it. Once she verified it was still there she would move on to the next egg.

She agreed to stop long enough to pose for a picture, but you can see she wasn’t thrilled about it. I love soft, hazy sunset-ey pictures.

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Sparky's Favorite Words

It's after midnight, but Sparky's still wide awake. I think she's teething. We tried to get her to go to bed around 10 because she was all sorts of grumpy, but when she was still screaming an hour later I couldn't bring myself to make her stay in there any longer. Hopefully the Ibuprofin kicks in for her soon. And with any luck she'll have a full mouth of teeth by the time she starts Kindergarten.

Since Sasquatch lets me sleep in on Saturday mornings, I decided to be nice and stay awake with her while he turned in "early." I think he deserves that every once in a while - especially since he's been working SO hard these last few months. AND he watched both of the girls all afternoon while I had fun downtown doing a family portrait session (I LOVE it when families opt for urban sessions!!).

So, Sparky's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and she's talking up a storm and I'm trying to keep things quiet and low-key to remind her that it's time for sleep. All the talking made me realize that I haven't been very good about documenting her favorite words. She started talking like crazy while Grandma Rosie was here, and now there are some actual words mixed in with all the gibberish. Some of her favorite words are:

DAY-doo (thank you)/WEH-come (she has to say the two words together - it's never just "thank you")

Pwease (please) - Not quite as cute as The Princess' version (she used to say "Beeps" for please), but still pretty adorable - especially when she signs it at the same time

Boop (book)

SEE-see (Seriously)

BAY-bee - She refers to all of her stuffed animals as babies

PUPpy - Sometimes she's referring to an actual dog, but it also means "goose," "squirrel," or any other random animal we see while taking our daily walk

KEY-key (Kitty) - The only animal she does NOT refer to as a "puppy"

Oof-oof - This is what a (real) puppy says

Meow - What a kitty says

Cack-cack - What a goose says

Tweet - Treat

Coo-kie - She distinctly pronounces each syllable and stresses the "k" sound in the middle - I'm not sure why she can't pronounce the "k" at the end of "book"

Soos (Shoes) - She tries to put them on several times a day and gets upset when I won't take her outside for a walk

Soss - (Socks)

BUH-boos (Bubbles)

Bap (Bath) - Don't make the mistake of allowing her anywhere near the bathroom unless you want to indulge in her chronic desire to strip down to her birthday suit and take a "bap"

She also has an adorable way of saying her sister's name any time she sees a picture of her (or sees my camera - she thinks any picture on my camera's LCD is her beloved big sister) or thinks it's time for her to be home from school.

She loves to say DAH-dee and Ma-MEE, and I love how she pronounces all the consonants - so cute!!

Up - She says this when she wants to be picked up

Hep - Sometimes she asks for help instead of screaming in frustration - usually she screams

WIH-ga? (What's that?)

Hi - It's so adorable to go in and get her when she wakes up from a nap. She always says "hi" in the most nonchalant manner.

Buh-bye

DOH-stay? (Downstairs - with a question mark at the end) is still a staple in her vocabulary - she hates to be cooped up in the tv/computer/playroom

I'm sure she says more than this, and probably MEANS a lot more with her nonsense words (she repeats the same ones over and and over), but these are the words that stand out because she says them most often these days.

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Random

It’s been a while since I’ve shared any images of The Princess. Here are a couple of  images I captured of her at the pond near our house.  The pond isn’t really much to look at (although we walk down there just about every day to feed the geese), but I LOVE how well it photographs. I thought I’d already shared the wing  portrait, but I can’t seem to find it, so I must have just shared it on Facebook. If you’ve already seen it, here it is again. It’s still one of my all-time favorites.

That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll have my new computer up and running within the next couple of days. Sasquatch built my current computer when we’d been married for about 2 months, so it’s really old and runs slower than molasses in January. The new computer should be MUCH faster, and I’m hoping the speed will make my editing process faster, so that I can share pictures on the blog more regularly.

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Cupcakes

There are few things that I love as much as photography, but baking probably comes pretty close. More than baking, I love decorating – especially cupcakes and sugar cookies. It’s so much fun to decorate sugar cookies with royal icing, but it tastes pretty awful (I prefer cream cheese frosting for eating), so I usually only decorate sugar cookies when I can take them somewhere and leave them there.

I wasn’t terribly fond of cupcakes - especially after I took all the time to pipe homemade butter cream on a bunch of cupcakes and the Princess took one bite and told me the frosting made her want to throw up. Thanks, Alton Brown. You and I usually have a pretty good food relationship, but you failed me on the butter cream.

I’d given up on butter cream, but somebody at playgroup suggested that I try making Italian butter cream instead. Holy crow! Sooooooo much better! You use regular sugar instead of confectioner’s sugar (making a simple syrup of sugar and water and then pouring it into the egg whites), and I think that makes all the difference! In some ways, piping frosting onto cupcakes is even more fun than decorating sugar cookies with royal icing. :)

A couple months ago, when Sasquatch was in Utah with Miss Sparky, The Princess and I went on a photography outing with our friends Larisa and Foster. As bribery, I promised The Princess a stop at our favorite bakery if she agreed to have her pictures taken and gave me nice facial expressions. She obliged, so we made a stop at the cupcake cupcake counter at said bakery. I usually can’t bring myself to drop $3.50 on a single cupcake (we usually share one), but I think it’s okay to splurge on occasion.

On this particular day, they had some adorable cupcakes on display that looked like ice cream sundaes. Chocolate cake and vanilla butter cream topped with chocolate ganache and sprinkles and crowned with a maraschino cherry. They were almost too cute to eat!

I decided I had to replicate them at home. The Princess was impressed when she saw them. Without being prompted, she told me that they looked just like the cupcakes at the bakery. That was a nice little boost to my ego.

I also made some plain-looking but oh-so-tasty chocolate cupcakes with hazelnut butter cream. They weren’t quite as pretty as the sundae-cakes, but they were my favorite on the taste scale.

I couldn’t go to that much effort without taking a few pictures, so here they are. :)

Don’t you just love the “catchlights” in the cherry?

And the hazelnut… I’m not much of a food photographer, but you get the idea.

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Glee!!

I'm so excited that Glee starts again tonight!

I know it's totally geeky (or should I say "Gleeky" - ha! I'm hilarious, right?!?), but I love this show. I think it's probably my all-time favorite TV show.

Part of it probably stems from my high school choir days. Although at my school, it was actually considered socially acceptable to be in choir. I was in Madrigals, which was our version of show choir (we didn't get to perform any mainstream music like they do on Glee, but it was still SO much fun). Most of the Madrigals were pretty popular (I wasn't - I was too painfully shy and didn't know how to flirt - most of the members of the group were notoriously talented at flirting), and none of us ever had Icees thrown in our face.

But in spite of the differences between the show and my personal high school experience, there's still so much about Glee that reminds me of one of the few things I actually loved about high school - music; particularly singing. I wasn't a great solo singer in high school, but I was great at singing in a group (matching pitch, sight reading, all that fun stuff).

One of my favorite memories about Madrigals is the weeks leading up to Solo and Ensemble festival. We used to practice our pieces in the hallway near the gym - the ceilings were really high, and the acoustics were amazing. When everyone matched pitch just right, you could actually feel the notes bounce off the ceiling - it was so cool! We'd occasionally practice the school hymn in that hallway as well - just for the fun of it.

I also loved Christmas. It was so much fun to practice beautiful Christmas music and then perform at various events around the valley during the months of November and December. We had the opportunity to sing on the stairs inside the church office building during my Junior year. While we were singing, President Hinckley came into the foyer and stopped to listen to us sing. He said a few words to us (I think I wrote them down in a journal somewhere), shook a few hands (I was too high up on the stairs to get to shake his hand), and left a lasting impression on our hearts. I still miss being in a choir when Christmas rolls around each year.

The actual show Glee is so different from my high school choir experience (the music is much cooler and better produced and there's a bit too much drama), but it still evokes some of the positive feelings that I have when I think back on high school. It reminds me that there were actually a few things that I enjoyed about school (photography was my other love, even back then - I still miss the darkroom!).

I'm pretty excited for the show to start again tonight. I'm feeling a bit melancholy and homesick since Sasquatch's mom went back home on Sunday, so it will be a good distraction. And it's so much fun to watch Sparky dance to all the musical numbers!

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Flip-Flops and Funny Faces

Sorry for the lack of blog posts recently. There are some things going on in my non-existent social life that are really bugging me. I naively thought that high school ended after high school and that at some point in my life, I’d actually “fit in.” Not that I want to be like “everyone else” – I’m still a fan of being unique, but still! 

I really want to blog about the specifics that are bothering me, but Sasquatch and another good friend have managed to convince me to be the better person and just leave it alone. I’m REALLY trying to be the better person, but for some reason, it’s all led to a little bit of a creative block. I’ve struggled to come up with anything else to write about, and I haven’t really wanted to edit any of my personal pictures in a while.

I’m determined to get over the whole thing, though. I desperately want to figure out how to be happy regardless of the circumstances. I’m still holding onto the hope and faith that certain things in our life are going to change soon, but in the meantime, I know it’s not a good attitude to say “I’ll be happy when…”

With that being said, I decided to edit some pictures of Miss Sparky last night. She LOVES to steal other people’s shoes and socks. Her very favorite shoes are a pair of The Princess’ flip-flops. She manages to clomp around in them remarkably well, but she’s prone to stepping out of them. This causes her no end of frustration, and when she’s frustrated, she makes that lovely little scream that sounds like a bottle rocket going off in the living room. Since I’m not a huge fan of high pitched noises reverberating off the vaulted ceilings (and amplified by the uncarpeted floors), I’ve asked The Princess to please keep the shoes in her bedroom.

I had to take these pictures first, though. When Sparky is actually willing to look at the camera (which isn’t very often), she gives me the funniest little cheeser grin, which I LOVE. I know I make a point of telling my clients to PLEASE refrain from telling their children to “say cheese,” and I’ve never uttered those words to my own children, but somehow they figure it out anyway. I think it’s kind of adorable in an only-every-once-in-a-while-on-camera sort of way.

Gotta love Sasquatch in the background working on code in this next one.

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