Sleepy Josh

There is a reason two-year-olds should take naps. I caught this video of Josh falling asleep at dinner the other day, and he had no idea I was actually filming him.


I love how he drools, asks to have his hands washed, and hits his head on his cup and almost falls out of his chair at the end. I mean, poor little boy, he must be tired.

3 Months Already!

Huh?


Yes indeed, as of this week Jonah is three months old! Time does fly when it comes to babies. I'm really not trying to turn this into a photo blog or anything, but it was definitely time to take some more pictures of little Jonie: after all, he's not a newborn anymore!

Most of the smiling pictures we got were blury because he moved to quickly, but we got a few like this that captured his cute grin:




and lots of these, which show his "Huh?" expression that he does so often:




This kind of shows his cocked eyebrow that he does so well:




Then we have our interested staring:





and lots of fist sucking, his favorite!





Of course we had to dress him in the same overalls that Josh wore for his three month pics, they are just so cute. Happy three months, Jonah!

Four Year Old Glamour Shots

On Elora's birthday last week, it was a perfect fall day, not too cold, sunny, and beautiful! I really wanted to get out and take some fun four-year-old pictures of Elora, but because of Joseph's tight schedule this semester, we usually don't have the car and couldn't go anywhere. Luckily, we had some changing leaves right in our backyard! So we took the opportunity and got some fun shots to commemorate her advancing age. Good thing, because as of today these very trees are already pretty much bare.

We took some playful shots:






some sweet shots:

One or two pretty ones:

( I love these...it doesn't look like her, but its so pretty!)

and some cool experiments:

when Elora was looking at this one, she suddenly noticed the space between her teeth, and said it looked like she'd lost a tooth in the middle...I hope she doesn't get self-conscious about the gap like I was as a kid (I got braces when I was 19):



Which do you like?

Happy Fourth Birthday, Elora!

Four years sure go by fast!......





One year...


Two years....


Three years....


almost four years....


Hope this next year is full of fun baby girl!

Portrait: The Happy Couple

These are the parents of the last two little girls I drew! I was given a wedding photo of the two of them sitting in front of a tree with some vague buildings and shrubbery in the background. I zoomed in in the faces, and decided to leave out the tree, mostly because at this distance, the four branches looked like horns coming out of their heads!
Its been a while since I've drawn adults, and hoped they'd turn out all right.





This is a different paper than last time, allowing me to do the colors darker than with the too-textured stuff, but its almost white, requiring me to build up the skin tones a lot more than on the yellow or pink papers:



The bride's cool hair decoration and necklace were a little vague in the photo I had, and I know I didn't get the details exact, but they didn't turn out too bad. Its hard to tell between these two photos, but I was adding more color to the faces:



I started in on the background, which helps me know how much more color I need to add to the skin etc. to make it look finished with the rich green behind it:



The bride has some cute freckles in the photo, but I wasn't sure how much I should try to include them. If I did too much they might look like some weird disease, and too little her skin would look the wrong color. The grooms clothes and hair were easy, at least in the photo they were a very flat black and dark brown:



At this point I couldn't decide if I was done or not. At the last minute, I decided to go back and define the collar bone and the necklace after this photo. I also added a little more to the shadow areas on the two faces to make them a bit darker:



And here is the final copy. The necklace still isn't as good as I would like it, I think I need to work on drawing shiny white objects so I can perfect my technique there. She had some lace detailing on her dress, which was hard to see (just like in my wedding photos!) but I tried to suggest it on the shoulders with a little purple and blue. Again, its hard to tell between these last two photos, but I did add to it!


The end.

Why I like walking in the cemetery

The last few weeks Joshua and I have been walking in the cemetery a few blocks from our home while Elora goes to her one-day preschool class.
I say "walking" but really, Josh gets too distracted by sticks and pinwheels so we usually don't wander too far. When I was younger, my mom would take us to the cemetery a few times a year-including Memorial Day- as many of my grandparents from both sides were buried there. We would always walk around and look at the headstones of people we didn't know as well, and enjoyed soaking in the history of the place.
I found it odd that Joseph had never really walked around cemeteries much in his life, and the first few years of our marriage we never visited any, even though I really missed the practice on Memorial Day. I suppose he probably wasn't comfortable there because of the death of his mother when he was younger.
But living here, the cemetery is so close to our home and so pretty, I've been happy to take up the practice again with my kids! (And I do have relatives buried here too: my mom's great grandparents.)



I especially love the tree-lined roads that criss-cross the place, each row lined by a different type of tree. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the pine trees. By the way, I would love to live on a street that looks like this someday:





I also love the variety of beautiful vistas throughout the lawns. This is one of my favorites:

What kind of tree is that anyway? I want one in my yard.

Some cemeteries have restrictions as to how big memorials can be. I remember one place in Everett, WA just looked like a big empty lawn unless you got close, because all the headstones were flat on the ground. Obviously, this place has no such restrictions. There are some really cool monuments here! Like this beautiful life-size weeping woman:




Or this tall guardian:



Now let me give you some perspective on how huge this statue really is (and how rich this family must have been!) Here it is by some other headstones:


You see that big ball over there? It is for the same family name, and it reaches my chest in height! Here, check out it's size (yes, sometimes I bring Elora too):



There are also many historical things around, like old fences around family plots:




And finely carved headstones from the 1800's:





I often spend time reading the headstones . Scenes like this always give me perspective, and I come home with more determination to be grateful for my children. These all belong to one family, and were all children that were either still-born or died within four years of birth. Scenarios like this are all too common in graveyards that reach back into the 1800's or beyond:


There is even one monument in this cemetery where they carved a lifesize bed with a little boy sleeping in it. I want to cry every time I see it. (It is in a completely different area than I was in this day, or I might have taken a picture.)

I like the fairly recent trend of bench-headstones, designed so visiting mourners can sit and think about their loved one instead of standing:



And there are no end to interesting epithets and life stories, some of which can be very moving. One old headstone listed a man's every great act throughout his life (and there were many) another noted that the mother and daughter had both died on one of the flights on 9-11. Some are just thoughtful poems:



Something that's very popular in Utah (I don't know about other places) is to list one's progeny on the back of the headstone. I enjoy seeing how many kids people have, and how interesting their names might be. Most stones show the children:



Though some also have grandchildren:



And I saw one the other day that actually listed some of their genealogy back a few generations! Very interesting:




I also keep an eye out for styles or designs I might someday use on my own headstone...is that morbid? I loved the carving on this one. Check out the old tire, the dog, and the initials carved in the tree. How cool is that?




Finally, our cemetery has a great view of the valley: