The Snail Diary

 

Oh my Glob, it’s my blog. It’s still around, it still exists! Hallelujah! Little miracles!

Anyway, life amirite? I do have some Harry Potter squares I haven’t taken pictures of yet that I need to but until then my triforce blanket is what you get. It’s beautiful and probably my favorite out of all the things I have made thus far.

The colors are a little weird in this picture because of some solar flare nonsense happening. Usually I like having a bit of that in my pictures but not so much in this one.

The following are my attempts at getting recent pictures of the boys. What isn’t seen here is my constant bribing, begging, and having to count to ten before I react because getting two kids to pose together and act like they enjoy sitting next to each other is utter nonsense.

 

This kid is so weird.

The second go around was just as ridiculous as the first.

And finally, today was Al’s first day of school. I got the eye tingles but I didn’t cry this time around so there’s that little piece of improvement, though it’s hard to accept that this will be his last year of preschool. I don’t know when my kids got so big and sassy but they did.

So another school year, summer is basically done. Let’s see if I improve on updates yeah? Don’t mind that noise, it’s just me nervously laughing in the background.

Yeesh, I’m back. Look at that. It’s only been half a year. I’m a slacker. I guess I wasn’t kidding when I said there wasn’t going to be a post next week last time. I really did mean to get to this a lot sooner since I took these pictures clear back in March. Whoops.

So obviously I didn’t get out and do pictures more often like I had hoped to. Um, maybe now I will? I don’t know. Let’s not pretend here. I’m trying my best.

I’m living a life of exhaustion. It feels like any amount of energy is being sucked outside to fuel the frozen wasteland that is this city in winter. I’ll not last much longer. Winter, when will you end?!

And it’s very unfortunate for my children that they happened to be born in the worst season for birthdays. I tried my best this year and it came out ok. As it turns out ‘Apple’ is a totally cute birthday theme though I think it could be better executed in the fall. AH WELL. Anyway, I got a few pictures of Finn for his birthday and they went a little better than Al’s did.

We tried to go out and do pictures a second day but everyone was cold and sad. This is the picture that sums up that entire trip out.

The third trip out went a lot better.

I told Al to strike a Batman pose. Apparently Batman is chill as heck.

At this point I’m basically counting down the days until winter is at its end and we can go back outside and play. Being trapped inside is basically the worst and I’m ready to be done with it, same with the kids.

But whatever. I’m hoping to start getting out a little more and doing more pictures of some of the stuff I’ve been crocheting. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten a nice walk in with the camera, and it would be nice to start getting better pictures of the things I’ve been working on.

Anyway, let’s not pretend there’s going to be an update next week. We all know I’m a liar.

I’m falling behind. Again. Always. It’s what I do. I’m still fighting the winter burn out though so I’m going to just ride that excuse until I get to the spring and can come up with a different excuse for why I can never keep up with this thing. That and we just haven’t been doing as much lately that I take pictures of with a camera. But we had Christmas and that went well. The boys are now loaded down with toys and I have yet to reorganize my house to fit everything but maybe by next winter I’ll have everything in it’s place just in time to be disrupted again.

I wasn’t happy with the amount of pictures I got of Al on his birthday so I attempted to take them again. I’m still not happy. He decided to be difficult. He wouldn’t look at the camera and every time I told him to smile he made this face that just looked like he was in pain or something. These aren’t even the most ridiculous of the bunch but I couldn’t handle editing all of them. At least I got some neat puddle jumping pictures.

Hopefully Finn will be better for his pictures in a couple weeks. I’ll be glad when all of the birthdays and everything are over cause I am so stinking tired feeling from this dismal weather. I’m ready for some warm days again!

I… haven’t posted since October. Oh jeez. Well, prepare for the pic dump of a lifetime I guess.

Stub nose duck! Every year I see this guy at the duck pond is another year my life is strengthened.I mostly just wanted to pull the camera out and get more practice on it since I haven’t been using it as much lately.

And this is the face of please mom, just let me be done with this and go inside.

These were all the pictures I took in the hopes of getting the perfect holiday card picture. I still feel like I never truly succeeded in getting it though a lot of the tongue out poses were close. Winter is just not the time for taking my kids outside. They don’t enjoy it for longer than five minutes.

Al wasn’t a big fan of santa this year unless santa happened to not be around to talk to.

Finn requested a giraffe for christmas.. because they were sitting next to a giraffe.

For Al’s birthday we went to the aquarium and it was awesome as usual with the added bonus that it didn’t catch on fir while we were there this time.

So I know this isn’t a good picture.. but I really like it. I think it looks cool.

I don’t know why Al was giving me such a face. He loves doing the rope bridge I promise.

 

This is my favorite birthday picture I got of him. He looks ecstatic.

My attempt to take him out today and get more pictures for his birthday. It’s been raining and snowing on and off and the weather is just gross. I wish cute fluffy snow would just fall down, or that it would at least stop raining because it’s just yuck.

Anyway, blah blah blah empty promises.

Here comes the next couple installments in the series of my children refusing to pose nicely and together for any pictures involving Halloween things this year. I was like ‘yeah, you guys be pumpkins, it’ll be adorable’ and they were like ‘nah, mom, nah we’re gonna be butts instead’ so that’s how that went.

Double thumbs winky face might make it up on the wall honestly.

“ERMERGERD PERMPKERNS”

And after that we went on an adventure to the duck park and I got a cutie picture of stub nose who is my favorite duck at the park. I want him for my own.

Al was off being a toot and not wanting pictures so much. I wanted to go check out some branch teepees someone had been making but it looked like it had become a campground for peeps and so I wasn’t down with taking the kids into there until I knew for sure who was down there.

Then we managed to get out and get our Halloween costume pictures done. Al and Finn had decided to switch and we got really lucky that they fit each other cause I think I would have just screamed and died and burned everything to the ground. It would have been madness. I cranked the ISO up a lot on the camera cause it was pretty dark so the pictures came out grainy, and Al wanted the mittens of course and Finn had to have his baby puppy. I might try and do another shoot later this week but I’m feeling pretty burned out from everything else already. Plus if I neglect my laundry pile anymore it’s going to collapse on me and trap me and I’ll die breathing in the sweet scent of fabric softener.

But I digress, and present to you the dragonborn and a dragon.

Plus bonus shots of this cool leaf thing someone did.

That concludes this weeks exciting installment of me barely surviving and scraping my life together one sippy cup and diaper at a time. This could be the end of me. Adios.

Can you die from eating too many tomatoes? Because holy crap we have been eating and receiving so many tomatoes. I might try out making spaghetti sauce tomorrow to cut down on some of them. It’s out of control.

Also, it’s that time of year! The time where the kids dress as skeletons and refuse to take really good pictures surrounded by pumpkins because they’re a couple of skeleton butts!

BABIES Y U NO JUST POSE TOGETHER AND SMILE NICE Y

Still, kinda cute. I got two more sessions for them planned, one of them being their costumes which are SO close to being done! I just have to track down a brown tan top for Finn’s and then that’s it, it’s finally over. I’m so stoked for Halloween! Best holiday everrrrrrrrrr.

Yo, whats up. I finally grabbed that scrap of paper off of the fridge and got back to doing our adventures. Unfortunately I am not as well practiced in pictures as I was when I was doing them all the time so my goal is to get out with the camera at least five days a week now. Since you probably can’t read the paper it says go on a nature hike.

Finn was less than thrilled with the idea of being out and about. Not really though, he just has a booger nose.

Well, October is upon us and it’s the best everrrrr! I took some fun creepy pictures in the woods. They didn’t come out as well as I had hoped but they were still fun and good practice. My only real regret on them was that I couldn’t get him and the cockroach to listen and do what I want at the same time. They were just unwilling to work together for me.

I wanted to test it with a cooling filter but I think I still prefer the warming one.

Also, it’s hard to get a good focus on a cockroach it turns out, even when they’re not moving.

This one is my favorite.

I was kind of all over with the warming filters and how I was doing them but it was the first time I had ever really applied them or done a vignette so I was testing it out.

Today Ty and I went and explored the salt lake city cemetery at last. So many cool statues and graves.

This is the EMO grave, one of the local haunts. It originally had a window in it looking in on a vase but it had a panel covering that unfortunately. I speculate that people have been breaking it or doing something equally jerky, I haven’t looked into it.

This is the interesting grave we originally went looking for. It’s a mystery and super strange. Also it appears to be big with the younger crowd who think that it’s a good idea to leave her cigarettes and motorhead tickets.. So yeah. Also allen wrenches?

I was excited to see a wood grave! This is only the second time I’ve seen them!

And that’s it for now. I have so much more planned. I love October, this is seriously the best month with the funnest things to do.

Holy jeez, I am not on top of things. Ah well.

First, I finished rainbow blanket #1 and I wanted to give it a good send off which obviously meant it got to have its picture taken with my turd kids. Al and Finn seem to have flipped roles where it’s a lot easier to get pictures of Finn than it is to get ones of Al now. Way too much movement and junk happening.

Good ol’ tiny satan.

I’m working on taking pictures more often as well so I took the camera with me to the Provo pride festival. I was there super early so there wasn’t a ton to be seen and by the time things were beginning to pick up the kids had already had enough with being out for the day so we headed back. It looked like fun though, I’m hoping next year I can enjoy it for longer.

Finn’s just ruggedly handsome and supports the rainbow.

And Al just likes suckers. You know how he rolls.

And this is short because I have not much to talk about beyond working super ridiculous hard on Finn’s Halloween costume and doing all the cleaning and feeling all the tired.

But this week-THIS WEEK-is the week I’m going to have it all. The clean home! The played with and not seeking attention children! The hobbies hobbied! All the things! I can have it all!