Finally, pictures of someone else!

Here in Utah Valley it's sort of hard to be an individual some times.

It seems like every single person on the street is a Mom in her mid 20's with 2 kids, a husband in school and a standard issue 5 lbs. digital camera around her neck.

I sort of miss being one of only a few young families in our Montana ward, and being the only Mom with a kid in the cart at the grocery store. I will say It is nice here since this area is saturated with families, there are a BILLION family oriented stores, and play places, places to go and things to do. In Billings there were mostly Bars and Casinos.

But I digress. I've thought a lot about trying to be a family photographer for fun and a little money to help us out while Tyler is in school. I guess I never had enough confidence in my work to think that anyone else might like my pictures. I know I'm not fantastic, but I'd like to think I'm at least above average.

A few months ago I took pictures of all the neighborhood kids to get some practice (and lets face it, new subject matter) in photographing kids. One of the Mom's approached me afterwards and asked me to take her family pictures for her.

I was so excited!!! I'm usually forcing people to pose for pictures so this was a treat! We finally were able to get everyone off work and healthy on a warm day. I had a blast! They were such a cute family, and I probably could have spent 3 hours taking their pictures if my battery hadn't died on me. So here are a few of the best (and there were a LOT of good ones, they were just so cute!).

I have come to the conclusion though that I'm just not a business person. I'm so paranoid about everyone being 100% satisfied that I just stress myself out about meeting their expectations. Then I look at the pictures I've taken and think "I like that a lot, am I crazy or is that actually a good picture?" For me, it's enjoyment. I just love doing it.

Ward Halloween Party!!!

I've known what we were going to be for Halloween for exactly a year, and I've been looking forward to today, for about a year.

Every October our ward has a chili cook off/ halloween costume contest/ trunk or treating party. And every year on that day it rains. For the last 4 years I have entered the chili cook off in our various wards. I/ the Brady girls have never won, but I think we are steadily getting better, even if our chili is always the spiciest (not on purpose I assure you).

Last Halloween while trick or treating, we saw a super mario family. Mario, Luigi and little baby Toad. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen. So about 2 months ago I got started on our costumes. It was great because we (or grandma's) had all the materials needed to make our costumes free! I didn't really follow a pattern for any of it, mostly because there wasn't really a pattern for any of it, but I think it actually came together quite nicely.

There happened to be 2 Super Mario families in attendance tonight. The other one was my adorable Visiting Teacher's family so it was a hilarious coincidence. Together we stole the show and took a combined 1st place in the adult costume category!!!! I was stoked!! Alex was adorable Princess Peach who actually wore her crown for a majority of the night. Heidi was the cutest little kid by far in her toad hat and vest. Tyler was a spitting image of Luigi in my opinion, and I looked less creepy in real life.

I think these guys should have won, especially since they threw their costumes together literally 5 minutes before the party. Archie was a little rebel without a cause and rocking that hair.

It was a fantastic night. Alex LOVED the trick or treating portion of the evening. She might be old enough that we can't get away with stealing all her candy this year. The best part of the night was when a guy in a grim reaper costume on stilts showed up. I told Alex not to look at him and she spent the next 10 minutes telling everyone around her "Don't look at the scary man. DON'T LOOK AT HIM."

Yay for our awesome ward and it's wonderful parties!

Jalapeno in the eye

Time marches on and I haven't been able to find a minute to post all the cute new pictures and adventures, so here we go.

There was this fantastic deal going on for a free picture printed on a canvas. Only problem was I couldn't decide on which picture to use. So Kate and I took the kids out for pictures, unfortunately we missed the deal, but we did get some great pictures.

I purposely overloaded this post with pictures for grandparents.

I took about 360 pictures that day. About 20 of them were good, and I only loved about 6 (all taken in the first 5 minutes when the kids would obey). Photographing kids is tricky!

Yes, I did have way to much fun with the photo editing software last night.

ADORABLE!!!

I can't believe Alex was this 'kissy' usually she won't let Archie touch her, or is trying to smash him into the ground and get him to wrestle her.

Tyler's favorite.

My favorite.

This is about when we started bribing them with mini marshmallows.

It worked great for a few minutes.

We even got Archie to perform.

This is their "We kissed, now give us a marshmallow" sign.

As ornery as they both can be with each other, I'm so glad that Alex has her Archie. They really do love (and hate) each other like siblings.

By the time I tried Alex and Heidi pictures, Alex was way past cooperating, even for bribes. Her hands are ALWAYS in her mouth when I don't want them to be. After playing in the dirt, during pictures, when meeting new people. Silly girl.

She did hold Heidi for a minute before pushing her off her lap and trying to use Heidi's face to help her stand up.

Heidi is growing like a weed! She always wants to be sitting, even though she hasn't quite mastered it yet.

This is the "Hug each other and you can have a grape" picture. Archie really wanted a grape, Alex was Soooo past being touched and performing.

I love the Archie's face full of grapes look.

This picture is all to reminiscent of a very similar picture where Alex was the baby and her two older cousins, Nicholas and Christian were the toddlers who didn't want to sit still and kiss the babies head.

Here is a great example of what the other 320 pictures look like.

I love this one. Alex and Archie are the same size (Alex is in Archie's pants), have the same nose and pretty much look like twins. Plus the fact that they are always together sort of gives both our families an idea of what having twins would be like.
The other day Kate asked Ben if he was going to be outside with his kids while we were cooking dinner. Today we went to the gym with Archie, while Kate watched Heidi, and I kept referring to them as our kids. I guess this picture just captures that unique closeness for me, a picture of Kate with her kids.

Heidi's gummy smile.

Someone lost a contact.

"Mom, are we done with pictures yet?"

After pictures we came home and had the weekly family dinner at our house! Tin foil dinners!!!! Alex and Arch helped split wood for the fire.

It was a blast. The food was great, the company was great. We cooked cinnamon rolls over the fire in Tonka's (I don't know their real name), I made the PERFECT smore (with the help of Devin's mad marshmallow toasting skills), and Archie got a mullet!!!!

That's right, Archie got a mullet. For halloween. It looks FANTASTIC. It also proves a great point about being judged by appearance. Archie doesn't know he has a mohawk mullet, but somehow when he does something bad, it's like he is extra naughty because of the haircut. I haven't snagged a good picture yet, but check out Ben and Kate's blog for a sneak peak!

So onto the title of the post, while making the tin foil dinners, I lovingly cut up a few jalapeno's for Tyler and Ben to enjoy. I rinsed my hands off after cutting them, but didn't think much of it even though the though crossed my mind that I'd heard once you need to be really careful while cutting peppers. I figured Tyler eats them like candy with his bare hands, I must be thinking of a different kind of pepper.

Fast forward to the cutting of the onions. Eyes watering, eyes being rubbed, jalapeno juice in eyes. Luckily Tyler was around to fix me up, although I think he enjoyed pouring water and milk into my open eyes a bit too much. So that's the trick to remember. Milk first THEN water (water just makes it worse, unless you are rinsing out the milk), and if that doesn't work, as strange as it sounds, dissolving a teaspoon of salt on your tongue finished it off for me! The burns on my face were soothed by ice cream and within 20 minutes, I was good as new. It was a truly terrible experience, especially cold milk dumped into the eye by a chuckling husband, but I'm really glad he was there to help out, and it was a really fun night.

Family time

I'm always bugging Tyler to come up with fun ideas for dates, or family days and he always says he can't ever think of anything. Well last weekend he came up with the funnest family date ever.

We decided to take the kids to the temple grounds and walk around because it was such a beautiful day.

No one wanted to pose for pictures of course (no one ever wants to pose for pictures)

But I caught a few cute snap shots.

Alex loved it. It was such a fun family activity. She hated to go, but we promised her rocks at our next stop.

Family pictures get a bit scarcer when there is no one to take the picture, but with the help of a bench we got one good shot in.

After the temple we went to rock canyon. I used to hike up here all the time, but somewhere in between marriage and kids I stopped going. It was so fun to go back, even if with little legs we technically didn't even make it into the canyon. Tyler is awesome.

We spend most of the "hike" jumping on the bridge.

Not a real flattering picture, but I thought it was great that we were both in the air.

Monday night our neighbors invited us over for pumpkin carving/painting. It was a lot of fun.

Yay for great friends and neighbors to make the holidays a little bit more fun!

Play Group at the Pumpkin Patch

October is speeding by!!!

Last week we went to the pumpkin patch in Vineyard with our playgroup. It was a lot of fun, not just a pumpkin patch by any means!

Here is a shot of the group, the bottom row (minus a few kids) is the group of kids we play with every week. The greatest thing about play group is that it is made up of a bunch of ladies I don't think I ever would have gotten to know otherwise. I look at each of them and think of the completely different circles we probably ran in during high school and college, yet somehow having kids gives us a common thread and a "jumping off point" for all sorts of conversations! It's been a lot of fun getting to know all those wonderful ladies and their kids!

Here is Alex and one of her sweet friends. We go to the gymnastics place with her every week, so they are pretty good friends. She is a month older than Alex and a foot taller, with the cutest curly hair!

Adorable.

Alex thought the goats were super cool.

I thought her jacket was pretty cute.

She braved the bouncy slide all by herself.

We tried the corn maize which was pretty fun until Alex REFUSED to walk. It was a lot of fun, everyone was worn out by the time we were finished.