New Baby

I think I totally spaced mentioning it here. I put everything on Facebook but since this is kind of my diary/journal I need to put it here too. We went in for the ultrasound on the 21st of December and are happy to report that everything looks good. Besides having a healthy baby, we are excited to report that our 4th and final baby is a girl!!!! We are beyond the moon excited about this fact. We were happy to only have boys and thankful for all of our children but there was always a little part of us that hoped we would also have a girl. Ben is finally getting his "daddy's little girl" and I'm going to get my little dolly. We are so thankful and excited for this gift.



Lala's Toes

Boots

This is a crosspost from MomShots, but I wanted to post it here so I am... It's my blog and I can do what I want!

Mag put his boots on his hands and was walking around like a horse, on all fours. It was really funny and super cute. I love this shot because it makes me laugh and I also love the rich fall colors.

FaceBook Status

A few of the FaceBook statuses I wrote in 2009.

A Video Treat

Here Gar is singing his version of Oh! Christmas Tree.




Uly is playing the Air Guitar to Christmas music.

Tall Grass

Cora purposefully not smiling for me.


Mag being Mag.



When Sariah and Cora where here in the beginning of November we all went out near Santaquin, UT to this old abandoned mine place. It was a pretty fun adventure!

Confession

I have a confession.
I want to be a photographer. Not a professional photographer that takes family portraits to earn a living. However, I want to have all the equipment, a studio space and the skills necessary to do that if I wanted. I still don't want to be a professional photographer, just be good enough to be.
My dream is to have a large, airy, bright room with studio lights, backdrops and other equipment. I want a studio. I want to be good enough to warrant a studio. I want to be good enough to warrant spending hours and hours working on photography.
That's my confession.
That's my dream for today.
I was just inspired by this woman's blog. She loves to shoot film and has a simplistic beauty to her images. I really feel inspired by reading through her posts.

Have I shared my current favorite still life shot with you? I don't take many shots that don't include my children so when I got to go to SLC and play with a Lensbaby I jumped at the chance. If you read MomShots then you already read about this. I love cross posts...

Thanksgiving - Day 6

My beautiful friend Maryanne, has been writing up daily blog posts about the things she is thankful for. I love it and I feel like I need to jump in and participate. Thanksgiving is one of the holidays that I tend to get caught up in the hustle and bustle and forget to take time to actually relish in the the chance to just "be thankful". Maybe this will help me with that.

This morning I am up before the rest of my family. I woke up at 4:30 and could not go back to sleep. I am thankful for the quiet. I am thankful for the peace. I am thankful for my laptop and the Internet, both helping me feel connected and not so isolated from friends and family.

I am thankful for my children and their unconditional love and trust. They are good examples to me.

I am thankful for Ben and his passion and drive to succeed and provide for our family. I am thankful for his creativity and ability to make something out of nothing.


What are you thankful for today?

A Yummy Pumpkin Treat

Tonight I made Oatmeal Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. I took a recipe I found on Cooks.com and changed some things. It was kind of boring and I made it better. So yummy! My boys ate half of them before I was even finished baking.

2 1/4 c. flour (half white and half whole wheat)
1 c. butter
1 c. oatmeal (I used quick oats)
16 oz. can pumpkin
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cardamon

1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. chocolate chips

I creamed the butter, sugar and eggs together and then added the can of pumpkin puree. I added all the dry ingredients next and chips last.

Baked at 350 degrees for 11 minutes.

This is a keeper that I will make again! I would like to add raisins and some nuts to the mix. They were so delish!

Song of the Day - Count Your Blessings

Last night I had a mini melt down. Throughout the night I was woken up by every single member of my family, often multiple times. This morning Magnus reached up onto the counter and pulled a really hot bowl of porridge down onto his foot and burnt himself; blisters and all. Everything that can go wrong, seems to be going that way. I haven't been all that happy with my lot these last 24 hours.

On a Google search for instructions to make fabric pumpkins, I randomly went to a blog this morning that I had never visited before. Her first post was about counting your blessings. She had a few YouTube videos with different renditions of this wonderful song. Already one of my favorites, today this is my Song of the Day.

This is my favorite version, a ragtime rendition sung by a Swedish Salvation Army choir. It's just fantastic!

When you pray for help, it can come from random places.

Uly's Song

This is a recording of a song that Ulysses made up about the vowels, this morning at breakfast. He also sings a song about counting by 10's that he learned at school. So cute!!!

I also want to add that Uly is doing awesome in school. He is learning so much and has got on all of his spelling tests this year. He is reading through the books his teacher is sending him home with and is doing great at math as well. He is learning all sorts of cool science, music and art stuff too plus he is having a blast. We love his school and are really thankful that we have been able to send him there this year.

Teeth, Cats and Random Handsomeness

A sunrise walk at the beach, this past summer.

Where I taught the boys about how to find anemones at low tide and how to squish them with their feet so that they squirt.

We discovered a baby sea star and got to pick it up and see what its skin felt like.

And we discovered and discussed barnacles.

My desert babies were enlightened.

The Tooth Fairy has been here a lot lately. Quite a lot lately...

We've also been enjoying a litter of kittens. This is my first time ever experiencing that and it has been a lot of fun. We have five. A couple are spoken for. Does anyone else want one? They will be old enough to give away on October 30th.

This kid just constantly amazed me. His brain is so much fun. I am excited to see how he uses it as he gets older. He has such an awesome and powerful imagination. Gar, my sweet little 4 year old...

A cute little smile from my niece, Lala.

Another cute niece, Cora.

Well Summer is over and school is in full swing. I need to start taking photos with an Autumn theme now... Halloween is just around the corner!

What's the deal with Blogger's compression?!? These photos look awful compared to what's on my computer! Oh well. It's better than nothing.

Vaudeville is Alive!

We got to see a vaudeville show and I was able to track down a photographer who took a bunch of stunning shots from it. I had to leave with Magnus and missed the highlight of Uly's evening. Here's a glimpse of how much fun he had.

These photos were not taken by me. They were taken by Jorge Lausell.

D is for Dang Awesome!

#4 - The Cat's Out of the Bag

Contrary to the pattern we have set with our last two children, this was actually planned. It looks like late April/early May.

Please Excuse Me...

I have to toot my own horn for a minute...

I was going through some shots that I accidently erased and found this:

OK, I did crop it a bit to get rid of Ken's GIGANTIC head. Just kidding, I did crop it and cut out Ken's head but only because I wanted to get a closer view. :) Anyway, compare this shot with this picture taken almost 4 years to the day...

Do you even know which person is me? I'm that fatty who just had a baby wearing the black shirt and red/purple skirt.

Are you freaking kidding me??!?!

I need to keep this picture and look at it often just so I can make myself feel good. I've lost over 45 lbs since then. Holy Crackers and Cheese!!! That's crazy!!! Seriously I have kids that weigh less then that.

I'm glad. This picture was seriously the motivation I needed tonight. We recently started our diets again (OK, everyone get their mutual laugh out of the way. We are constantly starting our diet again. We know it.) and I have been having a really tough weekend. Ben literally had to force feed me sausage for breakfast and a steak for dinner. I had to gag it down. I so did not want to eat that but after seeing this progress I am ready to eat a whole cow. Raw. Bring it on!!!

Maybe I should go to the gym instead of edit photos right now...

Spider Monkey is Starting School

Uly's first day of school was today. When I say first day of school I really mean it. He didn't go to preschool or any other type of formal school. He started kindergarten today and was so excited. He woke up this morning and the first thing he said to me was, "Mom, I'm so EXCITED!!!" It was adorable. When I pick him up today, I can't wait to here how his morning went.

Yummy Pea Salad

My aunt made this super yummy pea salad at our family reunion. I thought some of you might like it. If you make it you will not be disappointed!!!

http://unexpectednecessities.blogspot.com/2009/08/award-for-best-pea-salad.html

This picture of my nephew Matt doesn't really have much to do with this post. I just like it.

Reunion, Summer, Updates...

I don't want to cross post here so I'm not going to repeat everything I recently wrote on MomShots. If you want to see a few shots from our summer adventures and recent family reunion check out these links.

http://www.momshots.com/being-sneaky/

http://www.momshots.com/is-summer-nearly-over/

Mag and the Pudding...

The other night Ben was feeding the boys dinner. For dessert I had made them some chocolate pudding.

Mag was the first one done and so Ben put a nice glo

p of pudding on a paper plate and gave it to him. When he saw it, he started screaming, "Nooooo!!! Yucky!!! Nooooo!!!!"

Ben tried to force him into trying it and he just screamed louder and squirmed all the more; seriously freaking out.

Bewildered, Ben took it away from him and he instantly calmed down. Then Ben dished Gar & Uly their helpings and handed it to the boys. The older boys instantly started digging in and saying how yummy it was.

As Mag watched this he realized it was a treat and that chocolate pudding was something he might enjoy. He started asking for some and so Ben gave his plate back to him. He proceeded to eat and enjoy it.

Later that night, Ben and I were talking about what happened. We realized that the only brown goopy thing that Mag has ever seen in his short little life, is poop. We came to the decision that Magnus was convinced that his daddy was trying to feed him poop.

We can take sweet comfort in the knowledge that our baby won't accidently ingest any fecal matter in the near future!

From the mind of a 4 year old...

The other day Ben was asking Gar how old he was. Not used to being 4, Gar said he was 3. Ben corrected him and said that Gar was 4 years old now. Then he asked Gar again how old he was. Gar said, "Four mine old."

Ben said, "What? How old are you?"

Gar answered, "Four mine old."

"No Gar, you are Four years old," Ben corrected again, not quite sure what it was that Gar was actually saying.

"Right, Four mine old," Gar said again.

Suddenly we realized that Gar, who really has no concept of what a 'year' is was confusing the word with the word 'your'. He thought Ben was saying that he was 'Four yours old' and he was correctly saying that he was 'Four mine old'.

Out of the mouth of babes comes the most wonderful stuff.

Today is Your Birthday! Well it's My Birthday too!

Today is Garland and Magnus' birthday. Gar is 4 and Mag is 2. They are growing up so fast and are such a joy and a blessing that they are in our family. They are wonderful boys.

We celebrated Gar's birthday last weekend when Ben's parents Val & Jim where here. Gar got a Spiderman costume and has pretty much been wearing it non-stop since. He loves it!

Watch out because he'll shoot his webs at you! He is a good aim!!!

Mag's birthday was celebrated a few days ago. He received a life size Brum pedal car. If you don't know Brum you can watch an episode here. It's his favorite.

So we are currently waiting and hoping Olea will have her baby today. It would be fun to have another birthday today. We'll see. There is still 12 hours left in this day!

While we have been waiting for the baby to be born, Olea, my mom and I have been preserving food. I guess that's what Walker women do when we get together. Some women go shopping. We can. My mom brought down a pressure cooker (THANKS! Uncle Jim & Aunt Carol!!!) with her and we made a big batch of chili and canned it up. We learned how to use the pressure cooker and it was not as scary or as hard as I thought it would be. Here are a few jars of chili sitting on the counter waiting their turn to get cooked.

I thought i would end this post with a cute picture. Here is Papa (Jim) and Mag both laughing.

Beautiful Olea

Olea and I had a few minutes one bright and sunny afternoon to run out and shoot a few shots of Olea in her pregnant glory. She is getting so close to being able to meet her daughter. It is so much fun to watch Adam and Olea go through all those new parent emotions. It really brings me back!

I wish I had had more kidless time to take some more shots of her but I have to be thankful for the hour I did have. Here are a few.