Photos from the past week. Out of order Christmas fun with the family, like my sweet little sister, Katie.
We celebrated Kevin's 29th birthday with an ice cream cake (two, actually).
Here are the said treats. Mom sent us a kit to make them:
Not as pretty as the picture on the box, but fun. Caleb and I had a good time with it. When we finished the white chocolate before we finished the final snowman, Caleb decided we could just use red. I didn't think anything about until we pulled him out of the mold. Oops, look like Frosty needs to go to the emergency room.
Last Thursday I brought my boys over Natalie's and I tried to take pictures of her precious baby girls and then a few of the baby boy she cares for during the day. It was pretty insane having the 5 kids there and trying to work. The toddlers were not interested in sitting still and looking at me, much less smiling. I am seriously considering getting a clown costume and an inflatable hammer that squeaks when I hit myself in the head with it. I should probably just calm down and not worry so much about getting the "grip and grin" shot. That's what the Sears Portrait Studio is for, and it's just not my style. Sears has a great setup and is pretty cheap, so I'm not knocking it, it's just different. I need to let go of the idea of having a 2 year old sit pretty, gaze into my lens, and smile her heart out. Anyways, here are a few from that crazy day. Natalie's house has never looked so junked out as when we left. Sorry Nat! My boys are truly a whirlwind.
And here's the baby:
And my best Sears impersonation:
Just to prove that Kevin and I are not the only weird family in the world, here some photos I took for the Fine-Bradleys Christmas card. They keep three egg-laying chickens in their backyard and wanted to have the birds in their photo. Robin made little hats for Nuggett, Fritter, and Pot Pie. Caleb and Joshua ate a belly-full of bread while we tried to orchestrate the appearance of a natural-looking family by the fire. It was a bit of a production, but it was fun. And then it got a little crazy (see the picture progression below). 
I took photos of Emmy yesterday and I just didn't like enough of the portraits, so I got to try again today. Thanks to Natalie and Michelle for letting us invade their houses, and for helping with my kids while I tried to catch a fleeting smile on this funny little girl's face.
Natalie was really good at making Em laugh, and helped me not feel so silly acting the fool trying to get Em's attention. She even humored the kids and blew bubbles in the house. The other kids loved it, too.
Ellie's turning three on Sunday. I have loved watching her grow up. Strange to think of the first time I saw her, just few weeks old with a round face and crazy blonde hair. She looked like "little Riley" then. How fast she has grown into a little girl. She's two months older than Caleb, so it's been fun to see what she's learning and knowing what's up next for my baby. She is incredibly smart and independent. I have no doubt she has great things coming in life.
I took family pictures of the Rileys last weekend. You can see a few of them at my photo blog at: http://kristentothphotography.blogspot.com/.
I should be cleaning, or working on photos, but I heard this story on NPR this morning about toxic toys and had to share this website.
I've had a thing about toys since the boys were babes, but it was always a "crazy mom" bent. It's just, if they make thousands of toys in Europe that pass really stringent safety tests (physical as well as chemical) why can't we have similar standards here? It doesn't seem that hard. I know it has to do with our governmental system and my husband would say for the govt. to stay out of it and let the free market dictate how our toys are made. But I say that's retarded and unless there is a tag attached to each toy stating it's toxicity level, the lack of information provided to the average consumer will keep her/him from knowing what to buy.
All that to say, there's this website, healthytoys.org, that is really helpful. If you are buying Christmas gifts to kids this year, it's worth a gander. How else will you be able to choose which gift to give baby this year? Mercury or Lead? Arsenic or a chunk of chlorine to chew on?
It also takes less than 2 minutes to send a quick note to your congressional rep via the healthytoys homepage. If I could sign a petition twice, it would be that one.
Also, they have a search engine where you can look up exact toys that were tested for chemicals. It just ate up 20 minutes of my time, but I feel a lot better about letting Joshua gnaw on that puzzle piece.
Here's a few of the surprising toys I found on their worst toys list:
Wii
Leapster/Wall.E
Alex Crayons
I hope that didn't come off preachy. I'm just sad that the FDA or some other regulartory commission doesn't have standards for what our babes put in their mouths. I sweep my floors so Joshua won't eat that suspicious dirt clump, why wouldn't I want to make sure that their toys are hyped up on bromine?
So despite a yucky nauseous stomach at 5 am on Thanksgiving morning, I ran the half-marathon. Kevin was kind enough to take me to the race even though he didn't get to run. (There was some debacle at work. An 11 mile run was scheduled for Tuesday for the officers in the Battalion, so Kevin didn't register for the half, then his OPD run was canceled, and he was too late to register. Sad.) At 6:45, Kevin made me get out of the car even though I was groaning that I didn't want to run. And I'm glad that I did.
I ran a new Personal Record time of 1:45:52. Of course I had two goals, one out there, and one secret one. The first goal was to beat my previous half-marathon best time (1:49:45), which I did. The secret goal was to break 1:45, which I didn't do, but so close. If I were paying more attention to my watch, I would have realized that I wasn't going to get there in time. But instead, I'd been looking at my pace on my GPS. At mile 10 I had an average pace of 8:06. I figured, "Easy. I can make up 7 seconds in pace in three miles," and get my overall pace down to below 8:00, which would help me reach my goal of breaking 1:45. But I failed to consider the zigzagging I'd done down the road, getting around people and banking right for the water stops. So when I finished, my watch read a time of 1:46, with 13.37 miles, and a pace of 7:55. Too bad that's not what counts. I'll know next time to stop looking just at the pace window, and learn what splits I need to hit close to the end. I think I can break it next time. I keep getting better, so that's good. But it's also a little intimidating too, because next time, I'm going to have to run even faster and harder.
I think it's possible though, because this course was all up hills from mile 7 on. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not much. Of course that means miles 1 through 6 were probably downhill, but I'd rather it were the other way around. Also running down Peachtree Street in Atlanta is fun because you run though Buckhead then finish downtown, under the Olympic rings. But YUCK, it stunk. All of the restaurants on the route must have been dumping their used frying grease in the sewer because I just kept hitting aroma waves of stale french fries. That or the safety truck that drove up and down the course was burning vegetable oil. Didn't help my nausea.
I've done nothing physical since Thursday and I'm feeling a little bloated, so off I go to start CrossFit back up. Kevin left this morning for a 2 week trip and it was snowing this morning, so no outdoor runs with the boys until it warms up or he comes home.
I have no pics of the event. Sorry.
