Random Updates

Well, I haven't been all that good at keeping up with this...surprise! But a few things I've been meaning to post lately, with intentions of putting up pictures, but that just makes it take even longer for me to get around to it. So sorry, no pictures. 

Last Sunday (November 23) was our 4th anniversary and I feel it is my civic duty to make everyone else jealous of me :) It's no secret we aren't exactly drowning in money, so we couldn't do anything super special or fancy and since it fell on a Sunday this year anyways and Joel works on Saturdays, we really didn't do anything. But Joel is in charge of creating and printing the program at church, and being the graphic designer that he is always puts a picture of a temple inside and a church related picture on the outside, could be a photograph or painting, whatever. For our anniversary though he put the Portland temple on the inside and out (two different pictures), which is the temple we were married in. Honestly, at first I wasn't sure if he did it on purpose or not, or if it was just a picture he hadn't used yet. But since he changes the inside picture all the time and not everyone knows where all these temples are he puts a little line on the bottom of the back page that says which temple it is. So on our anniversary he put "Inside: Portland Temple - Happy Anniversary Kristyn!" How sweet is that?!

Along with our anniversary will always come Thanksgiving! And I am proud to say that I actually made a real Thanksgiving dinner! I'll admit my usual escape is ground turkey and mashed potatoes, Thanksgiving in a bowl if you will, but no more. It went relatively well too all things considered. The turkey was small and so it finished a little sooner than I thought it, but we had no idea how to carve it, so by the time we were done with that we had to put it back in the oven to warm back up! It was also in carving that we found the giblets, I swear we looked all over for those things and couldn't find them! I guess that's why they wrap them in paper. The biggest catastrophe was the gravy, I thought I was going to be able to make gravy with the drippings from the turkey, but that just was not working. Luckily I had a back up, but I misread the directions and thought it was a 1:1 ratio, when really it was a 1:4 (1 part mix, 4 parts water), so I ended up making twice as much gravy as I had intended, but almost ended up making 4 times as much! All in all it was great, I still can't figure out how people can get everything to all be ready and hot at the same time... I suppose years of practice. Maybe we'll have Thanksgiving twice a year at our house, I have some catching up to do I think.

And finally, I'm sure we all knew it would have to happen some day... I was getting ready this morning and gave Jonas my comb to play with while he was hanging out with me. He left the room and I hear scratching on the hallway wall. I holler at him to please stop, we don't need to comb the wall. He doesn't. So I go out there to find he is not combing the walls, he is coloring them. Needless to say, he was in big trouble and he knew it. I was actually quite impressed at how well he behaved afterwards. Usually when he gets put in time out I put him into his crib because I didn't think he was old enough to understand to stay in one place. But I told him to sit on the chair in his room and not move, and he didn't. We've now been talking all day about how we do not color on walls and we only color on paper... And now I have to paint my hallway. The crayons that he used were the ones that just smear everywhere and the paint in the hall is the cheap crappy paint that comes with the house and just washes off if you try and clean it. So for those of you who have seen our house, the hall will be the same color green as the kitchen. We decided purple (our living room is purple) down the hall would be too much purple after that big living room and I'm not taking the time to paint beige. Boring! And anything else starts to get to be too many crazy colors. So that's what I'm off to do now, except I think I need a ladder...

Pictures!

Ok kids, I gave in to the pressure and joined Facebook. So now you can find me there. Just make sure you spell my name right - Kristyn Leonard - and you should be able to find me. As part of this wonderful new world I can create photo albums and post the link to other sites - like this one. So I have added a section to the side of my blog here and as I create new photo albums you can view them! Hooray!

We Made it! Nursery Time!

 
 

 

  

Jonas finally made 18 months this past week and today was his first day in nursery. He did totally fine, didn't even care when we left and no one had to come get us, they said he even sat and listened to the lesson. Hooray! To commemorate, we went to the beach last night and took some pictures. There weren't too many good ones, he's not really an evening person, he's more of a morning person, but that's just the way the schedules worked with Joel working and everything. And I really could have used a third adult there to help corral him. He made some of the CUTEST faces chasing these birds around the beach, but every time I'd try and get to the front side of him to take a picture the birds would fly off and he'd go the other direction, so I'd have to head back to catch him before he ended up in the ocean. In the meantime Joel was tossing bread to the birds to try and get them to hang around. In the end, none of those shots worked out. But now that I know what it takes to get it, maybe next time I'll have an extra set of hands. 

Hello World!

Another fun item just provided by my parents as a birthday present - a web cam! And for the record, I think it should count more as a gift for THEM than for ME... :) But with that we can now chat and grandma and grandpa and you can keep up with the ever growing Jonas. Joel has a yahoo messenger I think it's something weird like herrnubulator or something, but Mom and Dad use Skype so we've got one of those too; under what else, leonardohana.

As far as the munchkin goes, he's doing well. He started at his new preschool two weeks ago and LOVES it! I'm actually really surprised by how well he adapted. I was a little afraid to be taking him away from his friends and the only place he's ever known besides home. But in the two weeks he's been there he has only cried once when I left and that was because I came back in the middle of the day to meet his teacher and he thought he was getting to go home but he wasn't. And I'm told he was fine about 15 seconds after I left.  He's learning more signs, thanks to the Zollinger's who loaned us some Signing Times videos. Yes, you read that correctly I have finally broken down and let him start watching TV (he's not been allowed anything up until now). BUT, he only watches these educational videos, I sit and watch them with him, they're only 30 minutes long and it's not even everyday that he watches one. They loaned us two, but we only watch one every couple days. And they have been very helpful to all of us, because it's not like Joel or I know any sign language on our own, so we're learning with him. He just is so into everything right now, he love to "read" and he's trying so hard to communicate and I didn't want to hold him back. He was ready to learn more, and this is how we're learning, for now at least.

Happy Birthday to ME!

Yesterday was my birthday, the big 2-7...closing in on 30 every year, yikes! We went to the Oatlands Wildlife Center here in Savannah yesterday morning, but I forgot my camera. How, I'm not exactly sure since of all people I ought to carry a camera 24-7. But that was fun, showed Jonas some more animals, he's now signing bird, dog and cat, which is pretty cute! Then last night we went to a waterpark, again no pictures since water and cameras don't mix. But again, tons of fun was had by all! Jonas just loves getting splashed with water, he did NOT want to leave. Mucho Mahaloz to Lethe and Liz whose phone calls I missed while at the water park. I'm sorry I'm such a slacker and forget to call on your birthdays! I still want to come visit for Christmas before Jonas turns 2 and we have to pay for his plane ticket! When I talked to Braedon yesterday he said he found a family home video of us that's about 20 years old and was going to try and burn it to a DVD, if that happens I'll put a little of it here just so you can see how adorable I was at 7 years old!

Happy Father's Day Grandpa's!

After going to the Zoo last month (pictures to come, I promise!) Jonas has been on an animal kick. He was doing dog before we went and now, as you can tell he's expanded just a little :) I can't even keep track of all the sounds he knows now! There are a few missing, most memorably snake and cow which are quite funny, but when I tried to make the video a second time he wasn't really interested, so you get what you get. He starts his new daycare/preschool on Monday which we're really excited for despite the longer drive to get there. I'm sure we'll continue to see him flourish, especially in a more educational environment. Happy Father's Day to both our Dad's, we love you lots and can't imagine where we'd be without you!

Happy Birthday Uncle Tyler!

Finally! Here's a picture of Jonas' first freckle! I know it's kind of hard to see, but it's taken me forever just to get this! Be looking for lots more updates in the  near future. We went to Columbia, SC for Memorial Day weekend, and took lots of great pictures! I'm still trying to figure out if I can make a slide show with them or not. You might just start seeing lots of pictures from the Zoo, the water park, and a children's museum show up. And we'll be  making another video too. The Zoo got him all excited about animals and now all I hear is woof, woof; tweet, tweet; meow; moo, etc, etc, etc. but it's super cute! And of course grandma and grandpa want to hear from him. Well, I hear crib railings squeaking next to me here, so I guess the munchkin is up, time to play!

First Freckle!!!

I just noticed Jonas' first freckle yesterday! I'm still working on getting him to hold still so I can take a picture of it. It's on his left temple, just one little one near his hairline. And he has the worst farmer's tan from playing outside at daycare (even though I left an entire bottle of sunscreen with them... no comment on that situation), so it looks like he may be a true mix of me and joel and be able to tan (thank goodness! until now i was sure he had my lobster only skin) AND have freckles! i'll post a picture as soon as i get one!

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's a video of Jonas showing you the few signs he's learned so far. Thought everyone might like to see him in action!

Huh?

Just check this face out! I photographed Catilyn (see the RedAce blog for more details on her) this morning and Jonas and Joel came along, I caught this of the two of them playing together afterwards, and I don't know what is going on with Jonas' face! He's continuing to grow, but still a little behind Caitlyn's only a few weeks older than he is, but he's so much smaller! And still hadn't tripled his birthweight at his 15  month check up, which he should have done by the time he was one. I promise I do not starve this child no matter what everyone else thinks. Good grief, any time we go anywhere and someone offers him a snack he inhales it like he hasn't eaten in days and I think between that and his size I'm sure wrong assumptions get made. I swear he eats more than I do! Anyways, I have a shoot next weekend with a girl from church who is pregnant with twins, so look for those to be coming to the RedAce blog. I'm actually quite excited to photograph an adult. I can't even remember the last time I did that! I spend all my time wrangling kids! 

Happy Birthday Uncle Bradeon!

  

Hopefully you're looking at this... that last picture is a weird self portrait in the reflection of our fancy pants new washing machine... I spent the day photographing a model in the morning while Jonas played with the Burns' kids, then we spent the afternoon pushing trucks, and playing on our slip and slide! He loved it! Sorry no pictures of the slip and slide, it was just him and me and water and camera's don't mix.

Since we're finally online now...

since we finally got the internet at home and i know everyone is dying for constant updates on Jonas, let's see how long i can keep this up... things are good in our family now, joel's busy managing his store, so far they're doing better than corporate expected, so he's looking good. i'm busy working full time and trying to get our business up and running, which is going really well, there's always something moving us forward. i'm shooting a model this weekend (a girl in jonas' daycare class) and there's a girl at church pregnant w/ twins that i'm going to do maternity pictures for too. here's the lastest picture of our munchkin :)