My favorite present

Friday was our fifth anniversary. I'm sorry if I've mentioned that a hundred times. We semi-eloped for our wedding and planned it in a week and it was on the day of a big blizzard so we don't have too many photos of our big day because we were all freezing. But we made up for it on our first anniversary with my absolute favorite photos of us ice skating in our wedding gear in our backyard.


2011

After being in front of my camera for the last decade, it's hard to get Sean to happily pose for photo shoots these days so when he agreed to do another wedding clothes session with me for our anniversary I was overjoyed.

And not only did we dress up in the very cold windy weather, but he didn't complain once. And we laughed and skipped and ran around and climbed trees like teenagers. It was the best day.





I'm not going to post all of them, but you can see a few HERE on my flickr account. Including the outtakes of us trying to get in and out of a tree.

Happy 5th Anniversary, My Love.

I couldn't possibly explain my love for this man in a blog post. Or even fifty blog posts. So I threw together a simple video. I'm singing Calico Skies, one of my favorite love songs. It's not great quality, and most of these pictures are older, but I made it with love. For my Love.



Here's to fifty more years!

Laughy wife, happy life

There are plenty of secrets to a healthy marriage, laughter being one of them. Sean can make me laugh like no one else. He's quiet and keeps to himself a lot except here at home and to those who know him best, he only speaks when he has something important--or hilarious--to add to the conversation. I've got this line that I say to him a bunch, "And that's why I married you." I find myself saying that several times a week. He just makes my life better. I love his company. Always.



Here's a video from a bunch of years ago that makes me laugh. We do this thing...three seconds...where we have to try not to laugh for three seconds while the other person tickles us. It never fails, we end up cracking up.



Another thing that keeps our marriage laughing is mini marshmallows. We have a rule that if we're eating mini marshmallows we have to be throwing them at each other. We usually get one or two into our mouths and half the package ends up on the floor and we always laugh and laugh. Same goes for cheeseballs.

Although cheeseballs are way messier when we miss.

Be glad your mother isn't a photographer

I couldn't fall asleep tonight so I started taking pictures of my husband who had fallen asleep watching Netflix on his phone. I was trying out a new app called SlowShutter (thanks, Jackie!) and leaving the camera lens open to capture a sleeping Sean. I gave up after a few shots because I'm terrible at iPhone photography and I was only getting blurry photos of Sean's headphones and pillow. So then the photographer in me thought that I'd like to capture my sleeping babies using light painting, a technique where the shutter is left open in a dark room and you "paint" in the light with a flashlight or other source of light.

Often when I can't sleep I take my tripod outside and photograph the night sky. In the summer, especially. This one was taken in August:



It uses the same slow shutter method but the sky is bright enough so that light painting is not needed. And since tonight's low is 7°, I skipped the backyard and captured a different kind of twilight.

Here are the final images of my sleeping babies:


Kate


Dylan

I love that Dylan has a messy stack of books piled high and a fleet of trucks in his bed. He is very three.

These images are comprised of two shots each, one dark photo and one where I painted in the light. I created a double exposure for each to merge them into a subtler feel. You can see what the room really looks like on the left in this collage, and the photos brightened by my waving the flashlight app from my iPhone over the kids are on the right. The settings are the same--f3.5, 8 second shutter, ISO 250--but the photos are altered by the light painting.



You can barely see Dylan in his dark room without bringing in an external light source.

Neither of the kids woke up, they are pretty deep sleepers, but I did feel a little creepy standing near them with a tripod in the dark. It reminded me of that stalkery book I Love You Forever where the mom drives across town and sneaks into her adult son's room to rock him in her lap. Creeeeeeepy. But I always check in on the kids when they are asleep so I figure taking their picture so that I will always remember these moments isn't much different.

And I'm willing to pay for therapy years from now when they feel slighted that I snuck into their room with a camera and they were none the wiser until they saw photographic evidence.

I think I might try to sleep now. Good luck light painting!

In the beginning

When Sean and I started dating eight years ago, I made a video for each month we were together. I would sit down on the 14th of every month and pair our collection of photos with the sappiest love songs I could find. I was smitten with him. At the end of our first year of dating his entire family gathered to watch our anniversary video. They sat through the first month's video and clapped and then realized that I had made twelve of these videos and that they had agreed to watch a movie that was nearly an hour long. They were good sports about it and I'm pretty sure I beamed with love for Sean as he held me on his lap and we watched our first year together.

There was this instant chemistry between us; we were electric.



And he didn't even have to open his mouth for me to know exactly how he felt about me, all he had to do was look at me.



But the thing is, all of these years later, we have grown even more in love with each other. We're still in this honeymoon phase of our marriage. Madly in love.



I no longer make monthly movies of our relationship, I'm busy documenting our kids' lives instead, but that doesn't mean that our love is any less special or exciting. Our life has changed over the years but our love hasn't dwindled.

Forever in love.

Those three words

Friday is our 5th wedding anniversary and so I thought that I would tell some Sean and me stories on the blog. Get ready for some sappy blog posts!

Sean and I met at a bar. The first time he told me he loved me was in that same bar two years later. We hadn't been dating for three months yet and I know this because being the planner that he is, Sean didn't want to say those three HUGE words to me before a certain point in our relationship. His rule: We must not say "I love you" until we've been dating for at least 3 months.

Okay, now the story of when I first knew I was in danger of drowning in the love pool:

Ten years ago Sean and I had a slumber party at a friend's house and stayed up all night talking about Ireland. No seriously, we talked about Ireland. And through Ireland we talked about dreams and ambitions, goals, pasts, futures...we just kept talking. I wanted to kiss him but his best friend had a crush on me and so he held my hand and slept on the floor next to the couch. The next day was a freezing cold Sunday in October and we spent it building a patio and shivering profusely. Sean's nose began to run. He had a huge pile of bricks in his arms and I reached over and wiped his nose on my sleeve. His snotty watery nose didn't phase me and that's when I first knew I loved him. I know that's weird and I had no idea then just how much I would grow to love him, but I remember feeling so instantly at home with him. He was someone I trusted with my secrets.


Building patios together in 2004

Fast forward two years later to May of 2006. We had been dating for a little over two months. We spent every possible second together and had never spent a night apart. Pertaining to the way I felt (and still feel), "Love" was an understatement and I was bursting at the seams to say those three special words. Sean was bursting too, but would only let on when he had had too much to drink. On a car ride home from Mystic, he whispered "I can't wait for three months". And we didn't wait.



It seemed unfair. I loved this man and yet I couldn't tell him because of his stupid rule. So I protested. I'd say "I hate your rule" and it really meant "I love you. Ha! I said it!". He'd smile and say, "3 months, Love, no sooner".

But that night at the Eagle, the bar where we first met, he let his guard down. I was on stage singing my traditional La Isla Bonita into the karaoke machine. Let me better set the scene:


This video isn't from the I Love You night, but it was taken at the bar and this was the song I was singing.

So here I was on stage when Sean stood up from our spot at the bar and walked over to me. He stood right in front of me as I sang and yelled, "FUCK IT! I DON'T CARE ABOUT MY STUPID RULE! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! SEE? I SAID IT! I LOVE YOU!" He was close enough to me for his proclamation to echo into my microphone and the entire bar heard him. Picture yourself at the bar, sitting there watching this man profess his love to his girl for the first time as she sings a Madonna song in Spanish. Now that, my friends, is romance.

Anyone want to share an "I love you story"?

The About Me photo shoot

I needed an updated photo for the nonexistent About Me section of this blog which I will get around to writing someday, I promise. The About Me section is my least favorite part about blogging. I never know what to write. But anyway, I set up a tripod in the backyard and the kids and I had a really fun time playing in the snow. And the pictures came out pretty priceless. I'll never forget the way the kids laughed today, how Dylan and I had an extra long snowball fight and how Kate giggled in my arms as I ran all around the yard pretending to hide from Dylan's fastballs.







It was so warm today that the snow barely felt cold. Can I tell you how much I love this picture of Dylan holding up Katie. He dropped her a few seconds later and the two of them rolled around in the snow.



We rode our hot cycles, too. I had way too much fun on Dylan's plastic motorcycle.







And we played on the swings. More laughter.






Katie loves the swings as much as Dylan did when he was a baby.



I love every second of these two.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway I'm hosting on my blog. You can win a three-pack of awesome Montagne Jeunesse face masques!

Happy First Turkey Day, Miss Katie Rhea!

We survived Thanksgiving!



And actually it was quite lovely. Quite relaxing. Kathleen slept in until 11:30 this morning! The rest of us watched the parade on TV and hung out in our pajamas and made a big breakfast while we waited for the baby to wake up. When she finally stirred I dressed her in this outfit which is for 3 month olds but she still sort of fit and we took a few photos so we can always remember her first Thanksgiving.

You can see her little tooth here:



She's discovering headphones and deciding that she'd rather eat them than wear them.

We headed off to the grocery store to pick up some last minute forgotten items. When we came home we started to cook and then Grandma came over!



The dogs are always glad to see Grandma.



And then we ate.











Dylan loved the sparkling apple cider more than everything else, and Kate enjoyed stuffing her face being messy.

The dogs cleaned up some of Katie's crumbs.




So after a messy dinner the kids had a bubble bath.





Here's a little taste of what being a little sister is like. Big brother dumps soapy water on your head. Somehow she still loves him madly.

Grandma loved scooping up her little cuddly grandbabies.




Kate and the dogs took a nap and then Grandma and Dylan played Candyland.







My mother brought her computer charger and let me keep it overnight so I've been happily going through photos and blogs tonight. Dylan went to bed extra early and Sean and Kate are cuddling on the couch. Tomorrow we will hopefully get our Christmas tree in the morning and then I will start Christmas shopping online. Target is having an awesome deal that if you spend $75 on Black Friday they will grant you a 20% off coupon to use on your next purchase. And you can shop online and get free shipping if you have a Redcard so you can avoid all of the crazy lines at the store. I'm still trying to figure out what Katie should get for Christmas. Dylan, on the other hand, has had all of his requests planned for weeks.

Our Elf on the Shelf also is making his appearance tonight and Dylan will be very excited to see him tomorrow morning.

Bring on Christmas!!!