A Little Country Wedding

It's a cold, nasty, blowing, miserable day outside.  What better way to spend the boys' nap time than to look through my friend's wedding photos from a super warm day this past September?  

Megan approached me about taking her wedding photos one day when our boys were playing this spring.  She sounded super casual about it; like I do this sort of thing all the time, I'm a super professional, and not due to give birth to a child just days after her wedding.  All of this could not have been further from the truth.  

Thank goodness Megan has a cousin who volunteered to be the primary photog and thank goodness my little sister Liza volunteered to take my place in the event that I was preoccupied with having a baby on her wedding day.  Little stuff like that we had to plan around. 

Below are just a few of the 1195 photos that I took for her.  I'm not even joking.  I drove home after her wedding that night absolutely exhausted.  I was having contractions like crazy, my feet were swollen as large as a draft horse's and I couldn't hardly keep my eyes open but it was oh so worth it.  I also laughed that day harder than I had in a long, long time and got to witness one of the biggest days of a family's new life together.  Good times. 

Click on these photos to enlarge.  It's worth it.  (Well, for most of them at least.  Keep in mind I am NOT a professional.  You get what you pay for - which is absolutely nothing.)

This sign was so neat.
When you walked into their ceremony, you saw the front of the sign....

...and as you walked out after they were married, this was written on the opposite side.

This is the bride's dad.
His smile is so contagious.  I can't help but smile when I look at this picture.

Most adorable flower girl ever
I may or may not have already betrothed this little cutie to Kenyon.
Pretty sure that's not legal, but whatever.  Details, details.

She is so stunning right now, I can't even imagine her beauty as she ages.
Her dad is going to have a big problem on his hands very soon.

This captures everything about their wedding.
Simple, elegant, focused, relaxed, perfect. 

The bride and groom wrote sweet messages to their kiddos,
tied the messages onto balloons and released them into the air.
  I cried like there was no tomorrow. 

I caught a butterfly! I caught a butterfly!

And they lived happily ever after.

New Camera Lens

I saved up my reward points with a company and was able to receive a new 50mm lens for my camera for FREE (my favorite price).  I haven't had the chance to play with it much yet, save for one recent morning when I acted as my sons' own personal paparazzo.  

I definitely have some learning to do with this lens, especially in manual mode, but thus far it has been an enjoyable new toy.  Hopefully it will inspire me to take out my camera more often, and especially as John grows up and doesn't need to be held every minute of the day.  Focusing a camera while holding a baby is a near impossible task I have come to find out.

Lady, it is too early in the day for flash photography.

Let me eat my eggs in peace, woman.  And shut the blinds, please.

Today in microfashion:
Stormy Kromer cap courtesy of Auntie Lala; coat, shirt, pants courtesy of the hand-me-down box;
boots courtesy of the Salty Cow Mercantile.
Sidenote: God bless hand-me-downs.  This will probably be an entire post in an of itself one day.

Kenyon loves to ride in the feed wagon with his grandpa.
Wesley is hoping Kenyon enjoys it well enough to take it over someday so he won't have to.

State of the Family

In honor of last week's State of the Union address, I've decided to participate on a more familial level.  It will be approximately two hours, 59 minutes shorter; it will most certainly not be written by a professional speech writer; and I am wearing sweatpants instead of a suit.  However, much like the official State of the Union address, by the end of this address you will have heard much, learned little and absolutely no changes will take place in your course of action as a result.

John is adorable.  He does look incredibly similar to his brother at this age (which you would assume since they have the same parents) and has many of the same traits.  He is a very good-natured baby who smiles, giggles and coos incessantly....... unless he is placed in his carseat.  Kiddo hates being in his carseat and will scream the entire time he is placed in it.  Therefore, our trips to town are far and few between.  If you are ever offended by the trash bags piling up outside our back door or the containers overflowing with items for the recycle bins please know you are more than welcome to take them with you.  I; however, am going to wait until there is an overwhelming amount of each and make my scream-filled trip to town well worth the effort.

Kenyon amazes me every day.  For the past two years we watched as his physical traits altered and his physical movements changed drastically.  Now we witness as his mind develops and he starts to put pieces of the puzzle together.  My sister, Elizabeth, lives in a white house.  As we were driving (complete with screaming baby) one day through GW Co. we noticed a white house.  Kenyon pointed it out to me and asked, "Mom, why is Auntie Lala's house right there?"  Apparently every white house is now Auntie Lala's house.  Or when he arranged all his large lego blocks on the floor like a minefield and then stood above them on a stool.  "Mom, if I jump on top of these will I be mad, or scared?"  Hurt, kiddo, you will be hurt.

And then there are the parents.  Wes and I don't change much from day to day or year to year.  Efficiency is our key word.  We both try to do our best to make hay while the sun shines.  Sometimes that means building fence on a 'nice' 40 degree day, sometimes that means laundry and writing a blog post at 3 am because you're up anyway, and sometimes that means rocking a baby swing with your foot while completing snap tests on top of your washing machine that is full of muddy jeans while you have a jello salad setting up in the fridge and homemade biscuits cooking in the oven.  (Although I try not to pull days like that too often.  That whole 'efficient from 3 am till 10 pm' day about killed me.)

And there you have it, the state of our family.  Hope your's is in good shape as well.

Ranch Kids Are Resourceful

"Mama, we NEEEEED to go to Jake's tire shop.  I need to fix my tires."  

I had heard Kenyon plead with me all morning about how every tire on every single pickup, truck or trailer he owns was having tire problems.  Gee, I wonder where he could have gotten this idea?  Surely we don't have any tire problems, living out her in the FLINT hills.  (It's not the 'soft as a feather pillow' hills, folks.  

Between dealing with a teething, sickly baby and trying to complete some snap tests I did not have time to indulge Kenyon in this little playtime game. 

"Bud, Mama does not have the time to run you and your tires to Jake's.  If your tires need fixin', you're going to have to figure it out yourself."

I turned around moments later to find that my cell phone charger can also pull double duty as an air hose.  It's true, you learn something new every day. And yes, I am very proud that Kenyon figured out how to fix his tires all by himself.  Maybe Santa can bring him a tire machine next year.  

A List

• Do you ever have an extended period of time when both of your sick children are napping (and not napping on your chest)?  I am experiencing this phenomenon currently and I feel rather euphoric.  So giddy, in fact, that I almost felt like raising my hands in the air, doing a little dance and whooping it up.  I then remembered that I am not a Southern Baptist; I am a Lutheran.  Therefore I will continue to type quietly with a slight grin of contentment on my face.  This is how we express extreme joy.  This is most certainly true.  (If you are a Lutheran you are dying with laughter by now.  Or quietly chuckling with a slight grin on your face.  If you are not a Lutheran you don't really 'get it' but feel like some sort of inside joke just occurred.  You also are trying to go with the flow so you are chuckling with a slight grin on your face to act like you got it.  Either way I win.)  
• To follow through on one of my resolutions to clean and organize more, I've been trying to Kon Mari the crap out of my house.  You can take this to mean two things: 
• I've been trying to Kon Mari the crap (clutter, papers, trash, empty diaper boxes) out of my house.
• I've been trying to Kon Mari the HECK out of my house.  As in, clean, organize, vaccum and bleach everything in sight. Both of these interpretations are correct. 
• By now you are asking yourself, what is Kon Mari?  Good question. Urban Dictionary defines it as: to follow the process outlined in the book "The Magical Art of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo.  And we all know that the urban dictionary never lies.  (Don't judge, it was the first one to appear on my google search list.)  I never researched much into the origins of Kon Mari or why people feel compelled to switch her name and the title of her cleaning methods, but I found a lady on Instagram during one of my 4 am feedings and she was always taking pictures of her clean closets and clean counter tops and ranting and raving about how Kon Mari changed her life.  So there you have it.  
• I had forgotten how long the winter can be with a new baby.  Last year, Kenyon and I played outside constantly regardless of the weather.  Poor baby John has put quite the crimp in our style this year.  Kenyon still gets to go outside and feed cattle with his dad, but there are many days when I am climbing up the walls.  Cabin fever is real, my friends.  Pray for me!