2011 Year End Review - Part 3

One thing I've noticed in doing this Year End Review  is that I severely lack in the "Mommy Who Takes Photos" Department.

Did you know that Sim turned 40 in August and I turned 38 and we don't have a single picture?

And all of my kids had birthdays in the Fall, but I barely have enough pictures of them to even prove that I actually have children.

Sim has a birthday and turns "Lordy, Lordy, Hot and Forty!" and do I have a picture? Nope.


Eli turned 8 in September. Any photos? Nada.

Nandi loses her first tooth.  Oh. Am I supposed to take a picture of that?


Noah turns 10 and enters the double digits.  *Crickets*


We celebrated a little holiday that I like to call Thanksgiving. I vaguely remember something involving a lot of turkey and the color orange.


Christmas came. We celebrated Jesus' birth, opened presents, left food for the reindeer, had a huge Southern breakfast and took lots and lots of .... oh wait, no we didn't.


One of my problems is that I rely on everyone else to take photos. Everyone I know has an iphone or a phone with a camera, while my phone is short, oval, and actually flips open (so what if it makes everyone sound like they're talking through cellophane?).  So, I just let everyone else take pictures and ask them to send them to me. And because we all live busy lives, that rarely happens.  And I'm left with huge chunks of our lives that go completely undocumented because I'm too lazy/forgetful/insert word of choice to carry a camera).

Although, to be fair, I can say with all honesty that when my parents pass on, I'm going to inherit a ton of floppy disks and memory sticks and will be able to relive such moments as "Oh my gosh, there's Noah's 1st birthday!" and "Oh look, it's Nandi's first day of kindergarten" and "Hey, it's a picture of Eli with his first toy dinosaur!" "Here's another one of Eli and a dinosaur."  "And here's another one of Eli and a dinosaur."  "Umm, exactly how many years did this dinosaur phase last??"


So another goal of 2012 is to take more pictures. My friend Sandwich suggested that I take one photo a week for the whole year. That's doable, right?

We shall see. We shall see.

In the meantime, here's the rest of our 2011 Year-End Review, which, unfortunately, is pretty slim pickins...

SEPTEMBER 2011


Um, it looks like nothing special happened in the month of September. Despite that fact that my middle-child turned 8 years old and has nothing to prove it.

Don't worry, Eli, honey. I promise Mommy does love you and I promise that we did celebrate your 8th birthday.  Why don't you ask Nonna for proof? I think she was the one in charge of picture taking.

I also had my 20th high school reunion and didn't take my camera. I mean, who does that?? Fortunately, there's a thing I like to call Facebook and friends of mine tagged me in a lot of photos. And if we know anything at all about Facebook it's that whatever you put up on there will be captured forever and forever amen.

OCTOBER 2011


Noah turned 10 and Nandi turned 7, but, alas, they're really just my phantom children that I made up so I could be a mommy blogger... because, surely, a real mother would take pictures of her children on their birthday.

Nonna? Nonna? You took pictures didn't you??

Eli, despite being terrified of Halloween, set up a haunted house in his room. It included games such as "Bobbing for Angry Birds" and "Stick your hand in the robotic dinosaur and see if you can  grab a candy before it closes its jaws on you and gobbles up your fingers"  and the one I absolutely refused to play.. "Blindfold yourself, get on all fours, and reach under Eli's bed and grab an item and guess what it is."

Okay, so listen. If you read my "Quirks" blog post, you know that I have issues with "under the bed". There was no way that I was going to blindly reach my hand underneath Eli's bed, on Halloween!, and grab an object.

I know what lives underneath Eli's bed.  Dust balls, dirty underwear, and the occasional spider.  No way. No how.

The kids put up the Halloween wreath that they made... last year.  But I forgot to take a picture... last year.  So I took one... this year.


Isn't it cute?

We did the Auctions for a Cause for Sarah's Covenant Homes in India and raised over $1500!! I actually did take a lot of pictures this month, but they were mostly all for the auction.  The little diddies above are the multicultural family dolls I made.

Shameless plug. Shameless plug.


NOVEMBER 2011

I posted on Facebook during my 30 days of gratitude that I was thankful for Michael Landon's smooth, muscly chest during the "Jasper the Raccoon" episode on Little House in the Prairie and my coffee/tea mugs that Sim brought back from England.

Shallow? Say what?

We went to the Dallas Zoo and the Dallas Arboretum and had a grand ol' time, but I actually posted these pictures already.

And Thanksgiving happened. Think turkey, pie, and lying on the couch moaning with the top button of our jeans undone.


DECEMBER 2011


Tons happened. The kids had their school parties. We made Christmas villages with our friends David, Keifer, and Charlie. We went to the zoo with cousin Brittany.  We saw our family and celebrated three Christmases with them. Sim and I went on our yearly date and wasted our Christmas money on Sherlock Holmes. (The BBC version is sooooooo much better and streams on Netflix!)

But did I take pictures of any of that? Nope. Out everthing that happened in December, I found it most worthy to take pictures of me and Sim wearing the "William & Katherine"  masks that my friend Kristen sent over from London.

Shallow? Say what?

I hope each of you had a wonderful  2011 like we did. Even if we don't have the pictures to prove it.

Here's to 2012. Make it memorable!