Family Portraits

Commissioned, Directed, & Color Selection By: Simon

Artist: Mommy

Medium: Crayola marker on whiteboard

*side note: Simon has new slippers, thanks to Grandma & Grandpa! He loves them. And, I found washable dry-erase markers (but Simon loves the others so much we haven't swapped them)--Board Dudes brand, set of 4, sold at ShopKo, in case any other toddler-parents out there are searching :).

Valentine's Day

We got to share Valentine's weekend with Jen, Zoe, & Adam!

our church had a Valentine's dinner we all went to together...

Simon is a little less cooperative than Zoe when it comes to posing for the camera!

this photo was taken to complement a photo of Jen and I standing back to back ten years ago, when we were freshmen in college...ten years ago! I don't have a digital copy of that photo to post (this is a good thing), but I'll just say that we thought the double-pregnant bellies and toddlers-on-hips contrasted nicely with what we were holding in our last photo, (which was taken at a party...) to show how 10 years changes your lifestyle and maturity level a bit :-)

smile, Zoe! love the pigtails!

awwww...Zoe was free-flowing with the good-bye hugs; Simon was a little more reticent

Thanks for coming to visit us--we miss you guys!

And, on the Valentine theme--you grandparents, aunts, and uncles out there may have received a Valentine from Simon in the mail--we thought we'd give you a window into his creative process:

Making Valentines:

Hi Grandma!

We were lucky enough to spend this past weekend with Grandpa Phyllis. We were mixing business (training up on a new coding system) with pleasure, so we didn't have the camera out much, but did get a few photos from the extended weekend.

One of the weekend's tasks was getting Simon a haircut--he's been brushing it away from his eyes for weeks now! Though he clearly didn't enjoy the experience, he was very patient and sat very still for the whole thing.

We also searched for a few difficult to find Simon-related items. The first, washable dry-erase markers, we did not find (they do exist, I swear!)...but I did discover/decide that plain old washable markers would be fine for his easel whiteboard, as they come off the board with water--so they aren't dry erase, but they are washable (from clothes) and "wet erase". The second item we also didn't find--new slippers for Simon. I would like to just sit down and knit him some, but I have too many projects ongoing already, and I think that knit slippers are a bit too similar to socks for them to effectively tear him away from his too-small monkey slippers. You would think these would be easy to find...but every place either had only super girly slippers (Disney princesses and the like), or older-kid character/violent boy slippers (transformers, spiderman), or the few we found that were neither of those didn't have his size. Grrr. We did find Cars slippers in his size, but they are HUGE--like an extra few inches all the way around the foot, so they are shaped like cars--I just can't imagine him not falling every two seconds while wearing those. All I want are some little gender-neutral, non-violent animal slippers in a toddler size 6 or 7--is that too much to ask?!?!

having a snack with Grandma at the mall

We also introduced Grandma to bananagrams...its our new go-to game :). It seems every couple years we stumble across or are introduced to a new game we like, and that's all we play for several months (you know, in all that free time we have to play games!)...Grandma seemed to enjoy it too :).

Thanks for coming up, Grandma, and especially for subjecting yourself to an annoying training process for coding!