Moving my personal blog

I am making the decision to combine my personal and photography blog.  For those of you that follow me here can check out new blog post here.
http://stacypedersonphotography.com/blog/

Peaceful

Nothing is cuter than a sleeping child.   Oh and peaceful too.  Collin looked so cute sacked out this morning.

Here are a few of the boys playing with their cars from the movie Cars.  They are still obsessed with that movie.  

Our yearly skating event...

Okay so maybe we get out twice a year.  lol  It is supposed to be a nice week so we hope to go again one day this week after school.  We took the boys over to the Isle skating rink today.  It is Shane's birthday today, so we thought we would get out and do something fun.  Since we don't get out much, the boys aren't all so great.  I am surprised that Collin actually does better than Tyler.  By the end of our time, Tyler was getting there.  Tyler wants to grab onto stuff instead of trying to balance on his own so when he starts to loose it he just grabs on tight and his skates go out from underneath him.  Finally by the end I got him just to hold my hand just in case he would fall and not to hang from it as he tries to skate.  He did better using his stick, but only wanted to hold it to hit the puck and not to skate and balance himself.  He is just stubborn and won't take our advise.  I didn't think until now to point out to him all the times we as parents have been right.  Sometimes when we do that with him he stops and thinks sometimes.  I was proud of Tyler when he did skate down a good portion of the rink instead of crawling like he was initialing doing.  I kept motivating him by saying how good Collin did.

I love going to Isle's rink.  They have such a great set up.  You can even get a free cup of hot chocolate to warm up afterwards.  Shane has mentioned at a city counsel about purchasing some used boards to make a real rink instead of the crappy one we do have.  Maybe that way they would flood it more often so your not skating along and hit a patch of dirt.  Dangerous!  So hopefully next year the kids here will have something good to use and give them more to do here in the winter.  We would probably go out more if that was the case.

Now every year I say I am going to buy some skates.  I even tried some of those comfy one on once in Thief River, but they didn't have my correct size.  I just need to make it a priority.  Maybe this weekend  when I am in St Cloud.

Cereal hide and seek

My goal this year is to take more lifestyle images of the family and capture them being them in their element.  There was great light coming through the window when he sat down to eat.  I tried to move the cereal box a hair to get better light into his face and it turned into hide and seek with the cereal box.  I think I need to try and resize the photos different on the blog.  They look much sharper when you click on the photo and look at them in the slide show.  The must have changed the format lately.  

Minnow Races

It was the yearly minnow races at church tonight.  Tyler didn't participate from the get go this year.  I think he didn't because of his fear of losing.  He is the type that would rather not play if he knows he doesn't have a great chance of winning.  Collin's minnow was sort of a dud.  He did win his first time around, but we resorted to a little, tiny bit of cheating since we were tired of blowing on it and tapping the gutter to get it to go.  His buddy that he was racing against didn't have much luck either.  Collin got busy playing after his first heat and Tyler took over then.  Tyler didn't have any luck.  That thing didn't want to go anywhere. Probably didn't help that Collin manhandled the heck out of it before the 2nd race.

  

Valentine's Day Cards

Tyler has been begging to work on his Valentine's for a few days now.  Finally last night after church (hence the cross on his forehead) I let him work on them.  He got them done all by himself.  It has really sunken in now that Tyler is growing up.  He looked like such a big boy intently going thru his list, writing every ones names, and checking the names off his list when he was done.  I am so proud of him. 

In class at church last night Tyler drew a cross on his forehead.  After he was done with is Valentine's he was looking in the mirror and told me to watch.  He said "God Bless, Father, Son and Holy Spirit" as he made the sign of the cross on his forehead.  Pastor John has periodically been doing communion and church during our supper we have before the kids head off to class.  So even tho we don't go to church on Sundays often he still gets exposure to communion.  I sometimes wonder how much he pays attention in church and in class on Wednesday evenings.  Any time I ask him what he learned he just replies " You know, about God."  He didn't want to wash it off before bed last night.  He wanted to show his teacher today.  I felt bad, but figured it was unfortunately not appropriate for school. 

I just feel like last night I could see how Tyler is growing up and not my little, little boy anymore. 

Finally some snow!!!

As much as I said I really liked the unusual winter we have had with no snow, I must admit I like the little bit of snow we got this week.  I guess if it is going to be winter we might as well have some on the ground so we can enjoy some winter activities.  Well the day it snowed Shane promised Tyler that he would pick him up at school on Tuesday and we would go sledding.  So off headed out to Kathio to the sledding hill.  It was so beautiful out there yesterday.  The weather was just perfect and gorgeous at sunset.  I really could have gone for a walk in the woods.  We did see a group of deer on the way in.  Of course as usual they are not scared one bit.  Shane even honked to get them to look up and they wouldn't budge.  I was surprised that someone had already been sledding down the hill.  Collin was all excited to go down the hill the first time, but with the new tube that we got I think if was a little too fast for him.  So he was done after that.  Even tho it was not even an hour we spent there, it was great to get out of the house.  The kids have sort of been wild and maybe a tiny bit of cabin fever set in after that cold spell we had.  It looks like there will be a nice week ahead.  Here are a few photos from our adventure.  Shane is trying to be more proactive getting pictures with me in them.  I am very greatful for that.