First Day of School

I decided to start sharing projects on my blog since those involve family photos too. Here is a layout I made last night. Conrad's first day of school at Brown Elementary. I tried to get a photo of him by himself, but Rylan insisted on joining in the fun.

Butterflies and Blooms

Going to see the butterflies at the Franklin Park Conservatory has become somewhat of a tradition for us. We haven't been every year, but there aren't too many years that we miss. Today we decided it would be a nice way to finish off Conrad's spring break. It was such a nice day for it because it was too cold to do anything outside, but the sun was out. It was crowded, but we really enjoyed ourselves!

Christmas photo fiasco

I decided this afternoon that I'd better get cracking on our Christmas card photo so I would have a chance to get them in the mail before 2008. It was nice and sunny in the afternoon, so while Conrad was at school I shot some photos of Rylan. I am a big advocate of "fair", so I thought I should get some wallets printed of Rylan to go along with Conrad's school photo.







Surprisingly, Rylan was quite cooperative. I mean, the kid is cute 24x7, but he usually runs in terror when I break out the camera. He was all smiles today though! We tried a bunch with him standing in front of the tree (wild hair and all)...

...then he ran off and found the Mickey ears from our trip to Disney a few years ago. Those were really cute too!!

This is the one I went with though. That look is just so "Rylan".

Unfortunately, the picture taking wasn't as fun when Conrad got home. Rylan had had enough cooperating for one day. I tried to make it fun, but it turned into a headache!!





Can we try not leaning quite so far?










This one was close, but Rylan looks like he needs to sneeze or something.












Ok, we've lost them. I think I told Rylan to hug his brother, not choke him!











In a last attempt at a Christmas card quality photo, I decided to head to the mall too see Santa after Conrad's piano lesson. After all, it was 6:30 -- shouldn't most families be eating dinner at that time?

Turns out I was wrong. Very very wrong. As we walked through Macy's, I knew there must be quite a line because I could hear the noise almost as soon as we entered the store. My jaw dropped after we made our way past the cosmetic counters. Judging from the harried looks of the parents toward the front of the line, they had to have been standing there at least an hour. I pulled Conrad and Rylan aside and asked if it would be ok to wait to visit Santa until Conrad's is on Christmas vacation (so we can go during the day). Thank goodness they were feeling agreeable. But I still had my photo dilemma. Being the resourceful mama that I am, I had the boys take off their coats and sit in front of the decorations by the entrance. Voila! Instant Holiday merriment!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Snow!

Well, I thought by now I would have Santa pictures to share. I had this grand plan to take the boys Wednesday morning. Conrad had a late start day at school, so I thought I could go to the mall and beat the crowds before dropping Conrad off at school. However, when I woke up and looked out the window, it looked like this:


so we decided to play outside instead. I didn't want to risk our lives just so we could go stand in line at the mall. I'm planning to put Santa photos on our Christmas cards this year, so if it gets to be late in the month and you haven't gotten a card from me yet, this is the reason! Hopefully we can go see Santa this weekend and get the cards printed quickly.

I was negligent in my Mommy the Official Photographer responsibilities because I totally forgot to take any photos of the boys playing in the snow. Just know that they had a blast and were cute as can be all bundled up.

I kept waiting for them to cancel school because it fell heavily all morning, but apparently the roads weren't as bad as I suspected. After drying Conrad's coat and gloves, we all piled in the car so I could drive him down to the bus stop. Just last week I had mentioned that driveway markers were unnecessary, and all I had to do was drive straight from the garage to the road. My plan didn't work out so well because I ended up driving through our nice new grass with one side of the car, tearing it up in the process. Ooops...I guess the markers are a good idea after all.

Conrad walked in the front door a little late that afternoon. When I went to see how his day went, I immediately noticed the pile of snow all over his backpack and the back of his pants. After giving him the "look" (you know, the one where you raise your eyebrows in a questioning sort of way) he said "oh yeah, I decided to make a snow angel and forgot I still had my backpack on." Ahhhh, well good thing it is waterproof!

The next morning Jason got up early and went next door to borrow Mr. Jason's Steiner. Jason, if you are reading this, we are soooooo thankful to have your stash next door! He got our driveway plowed pretty quickly, and also a path for mom to get into her driveway. He saved some of the snow past the garage though, because he knew Jason would be disappointed if he didn't get to "play". He's pretty thoughtful, don't you think?

Cotton ball houses

Last year for a science project Conrad was to make a house out of ordinary objects and see if it could withstand the big bad wolf (a hairdryer). We opted to glue a huge pile of cotton balls on a piece of cardboard, cover it with aluminum foil for stability, and then cut a piece of cardboard for the roof. There was a lot of duct tape involved as well. It passed the test with flying colors and didn't budge.

Conrad came home from school on Monday ready to make another cotton ball house. I'm not quite sure why, but he was persistent. I brought him all of the cotton balls in the house, a piece of cardboard, and some glue. He worked tirelessly until every cotton ball was positioned just so, trying to ignore Rylan's offers to help. So now we have two cotton ball houses. I may need to take a trip to Sam's Club and stock up before the next house raising project.

Cousins!!

Friday, after we had all recovered from our turkey induced commas, we went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art with Aunt Jackie, her kids, Tina, her kids, and grandma and grandpa Lorntson. They are featuring Roman Art from the Louvre and it was incredible! Unfortunately Rylan was ready for a nap by the time we got there so I ended up carrying him through the exhibit. I loved that he was cuddly, but my arms felt like they would fall off my body by the time we were done. Afterwards we had the kids pose on this Love statue. From left to right we have Julia, Nancy, Chloe, Eva, Jacob and Conrad. Notice that Rylan is missing? He wasn't in the mood for posing.

Next we had them pose next to the huge numbers. Jacob chose a 4 since putting his age together would have taken some serious Photoshopping.

Rylan posed next to the 2 but wasn't too happy about it.

Conrad was determined to climb on top of his number, but I convinced him to pose next to it instead.

Isn't Chloe the cutest? I love that she just stands there and smiles, instead of bobbing around saying "take a picture of this!" (like I am used to with my boys). So much easier!

Conrad at the Conrad

How many people get the chance to stay at a hotel with the same name as their own? Not too many I would suppose. There is a Conrad in Indianapolis (Hilton's top of the line hotel) and Jason had piles of hotel points, so we decided to stay there Thanksgiving night. We were going to Indy anyway to visit Jason's family, so we thought we would treat ourselves to a really (really really) nice hotel. We met another Conrad right off the bat when we went to park our car. The man working the valet service was named Conrad! Him and Conrad had a nice chat about what a great name they have. We were just in time to swim a little bit before they closed the pool for the night.


After swimming, the boys and I were hungry so we ordered room service and ate in our pj's. Conrad and Rylan did great sleeping in a bed together and went right to sleep (probably because it was close to midnight). Of course there was more swimming in the morning. Breakfast was fabulous with fancy fresh pastries and lots of fruit. Conrad got a kick out of all of the napkins and paper being personalized for him, and has been carrying the room key as his faux identification ever since. Now if we could just find a Rylan hotel...