I lightened it, does it look more like sunshine? Love ya!!

Gustav

So hurricanes are a fact of life here. Non-sunny weather is not. So in preparation for the hurricane my dear husband instructed my dear sons to pop all the balls and put them in the trash. Sigh. So much for my beautiful picture. Hopefully we will still be around to do the rest of the calendar! It looks really bad. Greg boarded up the windows and we have pulled everything inside we could and now we just hope for the best.
In the meantime I have uploaded my pictures to Walgreens so they are there, and I will probably back up the hard drive today. If we lose the computer though we will probably lose the backup as well and archeaologists many years from now may find the tiny fragments of the cds and wonder.
So other than that we bough fun food and friends have brought over movies and it looks like not too terrible a time.
Elizabeth's birthday is tomorrow and my mom's is today (Happy Birthday Mom!!) and Greg's Grandma J is tomorrow and Mike is tomorrow... and Gustav is tomorrow too so I won't be calling anyone. Sorry. I love you anyway. Here is a picture just to say, Pray for us!! Love, Heidi

Hurricanes are a fact of life in Louisiana. They are ruining my hot summer days right now and I need my summer picture! Sorry, other than that they are nasty. I am not a worrier though, I try to be prepared and keep informed and think straight. So rule #1 is make sure you have your 72 hour kits handy. For us this means a backpack full of clothes and food to last three days. Also a few toys and such for the kids or paper and pens, you never know when they come in handy. In there we also put an emergency phone number of someone in another state in case we need to get in touch, we need someone with phone lines. The chances of us losing phone at the same time as Oregon are pretty unlikely. Rule #2 is fill the water jugs. We have 11 five gallon jugs which means 55 gallons of H2O which is a nice cushion in case the water supply gets compromised. We also have lots of those little bottles of water in the 72 hour kits and a flat to put in the car in case we take off. Rule #3 is check the generator and fill the gas cans. We have checked the gen but the gas cans are gonna have to wait until it gets a little closer, I hate having all that gas on my patio... When this one's over we'll put it in the cars and just be ready for next time. Rule #4 is food. Snack food that doesn't take fridge use is essential. If you open that fridge with the power off it loses a lot of "cool" so the fewer times the better. I also borrowed a great book called "Appocalipse cooking" which made me think about things like conserving fuel in a no-electricity environment. We bbq but that does take a lot of gas, so the book got me thinking about things that cook quickly, like risotto (boil water, put it in, turn it off) and minute rice, among other things. Quinoa is something we tried because of this book too, it's amazing but the family still isn't crazy about it. It's a grain that cooks quickly too, great served with rice. OK so here is another must, fill up the cars and be ready to leave town. Lots of people get cash out but I know my bank is accessable in several states so I am ok. Things to think about - being prepared means not worrying, just staying ready!!

Rain rain go away, or not....

SO I get the balls, inflate them, and wait all week for sunshine. Clouds. Rain. Finally Greg suggests I get the kids out in the rain and umbrellas and take an umbrella picture. Ok I figure, If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, but then it stops... raining.... just ugly clouds, darn that Hurricane Fay! So no pictures yet, very frustrating... I am stressing because I want nice pics before the balls fade in the chlorine. I am worrying too much, yeah I know... The kids are all unexpectedly home tomorrow so whatever the weather we'll find something to photograph!

Calendar Picture

Every year lately I have been putting out calendars. My mom in law likes pics of all 4 kids on each month. This intrigued me. Do you know how hard it is to put 4 kids in one place at one time looking 'spontaneous' and facing the camera and looking interesting - once - let alone 12 or 13 times? So I like a challenge. So I love photography. So I love photographing my kids. It's a deal, bring it on! Here is one I just took in my back yard. I went out and bought all the clearance beach balls I could find, rounded up the kids and here is a pic. Now I am going to tell you this, it's painful, but I am gonna tell you, my dh does not think this is calendar worthy. I am going to try again a little earlier tomorrow, will post if successful! In the meantime if you need beach balls come see me!

Before I Forget

I thought I would keep trying with the pics before I forget how. Bear with me now:
First Elizabeth is loaded in one of the cool Dixie Landing rides, perfect in purple!!
I shrunk down the pic of the kids walking, this one is the full 4 megapixels. Then I load picture of Katie on carousel and it looks like it's gonna show up before the one of E. Go figure. Let's see...

Here are the kids, I wanted to take an action picture that would stay in focus so I asked them all to walk towards me at the same time. You see how well this worked. Elizabeth immediately obedient. Alexander goofing off. Philip waiting for Katie, who is very concerned about her knees showing, she knows she has cute knees. Oh yeah, that's my kids, there... I thought the fountain in the back would also provide some water interest and some movement but it kind of got lost.... next time we'll put Katie in the middle of the fountain and hang Alexander upside down from his knees like a monkey and see how that works!! Also need to go back later in the evening... ah photography is not as easy as it looks y'all, not for the faint of heart. I can't post too many or I would give away the Christmas Calendar. You know it's become an obsession.... but hey I love them so I guess it's worth it. And I get some great pics of the kids too. At least I like them!!