Family Portraits

A couple weekends ago, we shot family portraits. It's long overdue! The last official portraits we had done - you get all dressed up and go to a studio for the session was 10 years ago. We have all changed quite a bit since then! Especially Ryan. We were getting down to the wire to include pictures in our Christmas cards so we had to do it. I was fighting that wonderful winter cold that has been going around here for about a month. I moved the couch away from in front of our black wall, set up the camera and lights and started shooting. Here are a couple of the results. Boy after we were done, I was pretty worn out and ready for a nap. Gladly, I have recovered from the cold and the cards were mailed out - with picture. Success!

Animal Update

A couple of weeks ago it got really cold, so we decided that it was time to bring out the hoodies! The "boys" are being kept warm by their matching hoodies. So far, Ranger is actually keeping his on. Sam loved his from the moment we put it on him last year. We couldn't keep it on Ranger last year. I think this year he figured out that it's nice and toasty in there.

The "boys" sporting their hoodies:

Ranger:
Sam:

Sam wearing his hood up. I was bribing him to sit still with a tater tot:

Beardie, our bearded dragon taking a bath while his home gets cleaned out:

Project Time for School

Well, it's project time again at school. The kids had a choice of making a poster or a 3D model of a redesigned or original memorial. So, naturally Ryan decides to build a war memorial out of lego's. He worked on it a little bit every night after dinner. I think he had a fun time building it. He knew exactly what he wanted to do for it as soon as he came home with the assignment.

Top view of his Korean War Memorial:

Entrance:

Statue of the various uniforms from the war:
Scene of soldiers entering a Korean forest from the water:

Back side of the battle scene, with people visiting the memorial:

Ryan with his project:

Sam & His Happy Little Tail

Our little Sam is a pretty funny dog. I've posted about some of his crazy behavior before. He always keeps us entertained. Well, in this video, you will get to see him wagging just the end of his tail. He even does that when he is sitting. He will wag just the white tip of his tail. It's pretty funny.

First Band Concert

On Tuesday, Ryan had his first Band Concert. It was very nice. We saw performances by the Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Bands. The beginning band did a wonderful job. We had a lot of fun watching Ryan play.

The Beginning Band before the concert began:

Ryan playing his French Horn. The whole brass section contains one French Horn and two trumpets:

After the concert, we went out to Cold Stone Creamery with Shawn, one of Ryan's friends who plays drums, and their family. That was fun. They have a new ice cream flavor Dark Chocolate Peppermint. And as tempting as that was, I decided on the Brownie Batter Peanut Butter Perfection (or something like that!) It was yummy! How can you go wrong with brownie bits, brownie batter and peanut butter!!! Ryan had his traditional vanilla ice cream with chocolate chip cookie dough. It was a real nice evening.