Friday Flashback - Corn

This is my brother eating corn on the cob! I would say he's about 2, but he could be a little younger. Isn't it hilarious how he held the corn up using his other arm? I'm glad he doesn't eat corn like this anymore!

"Movin' on up" (cue the Jefferson's theme song)

We're "movin' on up". Well not really - but Mackenzie is "movin' on up" at school. Mackenzie moved up to the toddler class today at school. While they don't normally move kids up just because they turned 18 months, this was a request by us. We asked that she be separated from the little boy who did this:

This is a picture after we got home yesterday. A little boy had bitten her while they fought over a toy. This is the same boy who bit her about a month ago and I think the same one who had scratched her before that. This first picture doesn't clearly show how bad the bite is, so here's the picture from this morning:

And here's what it looked like tonight - 24 hours after the bite.

By the time we go to the doctor on Monday for her 18 month check up. it should be a nice shade of purple for the doctor to ask about!

I can't remember if I've blogged about this, but my mom said when I was younger (about 2 or 2 1/2) I had a boy in my class that also liked to bite. My mom says she taught me to scream when the boy came near me so that the teacher would be right there if he tried to bite me. Unfortunately, Mackenzie is too young for me to teach her that, so we'll just keep the boy away from her by putting her in a new class. Anyways, all is fine and I think she probably cried more about having a new teacher than she did with the bite!

Mackenzie's Animal Sounds

Earls and Ladies and Castles, Oh My!

When I was a junior in High School, my English teacher had all of us do a small genealogy project. We had to go back 5 generations, including ourselves. For me, this was super easy since my great grandparents were still alive. All I needed were the names of my great grandfather's parents and siblings. We obviously had to do other stuff also but as far as creating the family tree, that was easy for me. This project spurred on my interest in researching my family tree and going further than just 5 generations. In college I sent out letters to all of my family members asking questions about their immediate family and bought a genealogy/family tree program so that I could track everyone on my computer. A few years ago, I got a new updated program and was working on the family tree again. I was able to make further progress, but wasn't willing to pay any extra money for any of the online programs that help with tracing your genealogy.

That all changed last week when I was at home with Mackenzie. I decided I would use some of my birthday money to buy a one year subscription here. In less than a week, I have traced my grandmother's family name all the way back to the 1200's in Scotland. Apparently the Gordon Family was once Earls and Ladies and lived in Castles! I think this is really cool and can't wait to dig a little deeper with each person to see what else I find.

I'm also planning to look at all of the lines in my tree as well as Brandon's line. My ultimate goal in all of this is to print a book with the trees, family sheets, pictures and any stories I have of any family member. My aunt's mother-in-law once showed us a book she had made of her family tree and I really liked it. I think it would be awesome to have this history wrapped up all in one book and pass it on to my children. I've already started adding a few pictures here and there for the family members I have photos of. The pictures I'm scanning of my great-grandmothers will also be added.

If you have the time, I highly recommend researching your family genealogy. I think it gives you a whole new perspective on your family and how far they've come. I realize my family is no longer earls and ladies of Scotland, but they did make the trek to the states and with out that, I would not be here!

Friday Flashback - Let's Eat

Is my uncle ready to eat or what?! I'm sure others are at the table and just not in the picture, but it looks like it's all for him! I also like all of the tea glasses and then the baby bottle at the end of the table.
I love that I can tell this is Christmas Dinner. Even without the placemat I knew it was Christmas because there is turkey AND ham at the table. It's been 25 years since this picture was taken and that's still what we eat at Christmas. The first dish is Granny's cornbread dressing. Mmmm! This picture makes me hungry - how about you?

Baby Shower

My mom gave me a party favor idea for a baby shower I was helping host this past weekend. First the finished product, then the details for those who care to know.

My mom had made these favors for a baby shower she hosted, so she gave me the small glassine bags and some left over pink M&M's she had ordered. I borrowed the baby stamp set, but the rest of the stuff I actually had. I had to break out my art supplies from school, but I found my colored pencils and I used some sharpies I had to color in some of the stamps. The biggest issue I had was finding more M&M's when I ran out of the ones from my mom. Luckily since Easter is right around the corner, there are plenty of pink M&M's around. Well, there are plenty when you buy several bags! After I realized I was going to run out of pink M&M's even after I had bought 3 bags, I decided to use other colors as well. Here's a close up of the favors and the toppers.

Here is the decorated table for the shower.
Everything was so nice. My friend made homemade cupcakes that were absolutely delicious and another friend made these cute little onesies for the new baby.

Also, if you ever need a punch recipe, I have the perfect one for you! I'm not a big fan of the punch that is usually made at baby showers, so since I was assigned punch for the shower I wanted to be sure it was one I would drink. Here's the recipe:

2 liters of Sprite
2 liters of Hawaiin Punch
1.5 quarts (or however much you want to add) of rainbow sherbet

It was delicious. I have leftover sprite and sherbet here at the house. Now all I need to do is buy some more Hawaiin Punch and I could make a little thing of punch everyday!!! ;)

8 percent

During my senior year at A&M I took a photography class where I learned how to use an SLR camera and adjust shutter speeds, apperatures and all that good stuff. My mother-in-law let me use her camera for the class and I still have it. It just occurred to me that I may not have actually asked to permanently keep the camera. (Cindy, let me know if you need it back.)

Anyways, I used it along with my rather large digital camera until I received my small digital camera for graduation from grad school. Once I got the small digital camera, I rarely used my film camera. I was so excited when I got my digital SLR camera last year because I was really looking forward to using the manual settings. While I was super excited about it, I actually never really used it.

A year later, I finally touched the manual setting. I had another mini photo shoot with Mackenzie outside and kept the camera only on the manual settings. The problem with using the manual settings while taking pictures of a 17 month old, is that they move too much!!! ;) By the time I looked at the light meter and adjusted the shutter speed and f-stop, Mackenzie had changed positions, looked the other way or had quit smiling altogether. I took 38 photos and only about 3 pictures are worth printing. That's approximately 8%! It's a good thing it's digital otherwise I would have wasted A LOT of film!

This morning I played with the manual settings while inside - which is kind of difficult to get right with so little natural light inside. This time it was only 1 or 2 photos of about 40.

Slowly, but surely I'll get better. Maybe by this time next year I'll be using the manual setting much more and will have some awesome pictures. In the meantime, here are the few photos that were decent from the manual settings.