A few weeks ago I was at a friends house when she had a problem with her toilet, which meant that she and my husband had to go around town looking for a toilet remedy.  I was left alone for a long while and happend to have my good old trusty camera along with me.  I was so happy because I got to have a photo shoot with my little boys.  Mostly the wee little one.  I am warning you these are real-life photographs.  I left the pretty ones here along with the realistic ones:)

He didn't have any pants on because he pooped through all of them.

Chickens and a Trailor.

Isaiah decided recently that it is very important to figure out how to make a perfect omelet that slides right off the pan.  So, thanks to a very trustworthy youtube video, he has been practicing regularly, without a lot of success,  at least at the part of getting the omelet to slide right off the pan.   They have been very tasty, though. This morning we had an omelet with ham, feta, cheddar, tomato and avocado, topped with fresh chipotle salsa.  Well, fresh from a jar from Trader Joes.   It was very good but that is not why I am sharing this story.  I am sharing this story because I felt compelled to share a conversation that took place this morning in the James house, having to do with omletes.

Isaiah:  When we go to our family reunion outside of Glacier park in two years (which will be in a cabin in the middle of nowhere), I plan to make omelets for everyone there.
Me:  So, we are going to feed omelets to 22 people one morning?
Isaiah:  Yes,  I guess that will be over forty eggs. 
Me:  So I guess we can somehow manage to bring along forty raw eggs when we drive sixteen hours to Montana with two very small children.  I guess we can shove them in the back of the Volvo somewhere.
Isaiah:  Well, no we will have a new house and plenty of  chickens by then, and a trailer........

The kindness of neighbors....

It was a warm summer night, just after we arrived home from our epic camping trip to Montana, when Isaiah got it into his head that he would build a bon-fire in our fire pit in our yard.  He should have known better than to throw a bunch of green leaves and hazelnuts from around the yard into the fire pit,  but that is what he did and, lo and behold, a great cloud of black smoke rose from our yard and then filled the neighborhood.  What we wanted to do after that was to hide in our house, for to my dismay, all of the neighbors came out into the street in great alarm. I thought better of our first instinct, and decided it was appropriate to confess our guilt.  So we went outside and told everyone the truth about why it appeared as though the neighborhood was going up in flames somewhere nearby.  We might have hung our heads low as we confessed, but soon, a man-neighbor I didn't know was our man-neighbor told Isaiah something along the lines of  "hey, next time, I will help you build an even bigger bon-fire, maybe without the green leaves though, but a bigger bonfire." At that moment I decided that they are the right kind of neighbors to be having. They are from Alabama which might have expleined some of their excitement about bon fires.  They also have two of the cutest little girls with the curliest blond hair. 

So that is how we befriended our neighbors.....My latest photo session with them in documented in the previous blog post:)

Two of my obsessions:  Feet and fall.  Well, more like shoes and fall.

Love me like your dog does

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said "Ban country music." I thought to myself that that was unreasonable.  If they banned country music, what else would we make fun of?  Here is the latest and greatest I heard on the country music station:

I want you to love me like my dog does Baby

He never tells me that he's sick of this house
He never says why don't you get off that couch?
He dont cost me nothin when he wants to go out
I want you to love me like my dog

He never says I need a new attitude
Him and my sister ain't always in a feud
When I leave the seat up he don't think that it's rude
I want you to love me like my dog does Baby

When I come home, I want you to just go crazy
He never looks at me like he might hate me
I want you to love me like my dog

He never acts like he don't care for my friends
He never asks me where in the hell have you been?
He dont play dead when I wanna pet him

I want you to love me like my dog does honey

He never says 'I wish you made more money'
He always thinks that pull my finger is funny
I want you to love me like my dog

He dont get mad at me and throw a major fit
When I say his sister is a b**ch!

I want you to love me like my dog does baby
When I come home, I want you to just go crazy
He never looks at me like he might hate me
I want you to love me like my dog

I want you to love me like my dog does Baby

Oh dear

A sign of beauty, but also of impending perpetual gloom.....

HUNGRY!!!

Someday when I am rich due to my successful t-shirt company, I will have a line of "I survived......." T-shirts. I survived:

1. Costco on a Saturday
2. Labor
3. Airport Security
4. Taking a toddler and newborn into the grocery store
5. Driving in Miami
6. Eating Processed Foods
7. Being a Teen
8. Eating Carob

But please these ideas are copyrighted so don't try to steal them for your t-shirt company!

On the shores of Matheson

 

Back by popular demand!  Okay, so maybe back by the demand of one person!  Here are some photos of Matheson Hammock park, where I grew up going almost ALL the time with my family. I was going to give a delightful story about how we came to name our son Matheson and all that, but I smell a delightful aroma in the air that needs to be remedied immediately.....maybe I will write more about that later (about the naming of Matheson, not the aroma in the room), and maybe I will post more pictures of Matheson......the baby.  Because people probably want to see him.









 

All three of the Arroyo daughters learned to park in this very parking lot

Barley there.

I recall that I began to spell poorly in the fifth grade, when I refused to study for my spelling tests.  Perhaps its not a natural gift to me to spell properly in the first place, but I certainly could have made it easier if I tried. So, I suppose that you can safely say that I rely heavily on spell check.  Often this gets me into trouble because spell check is an amazing thing that is often no use at all.  Often, my spelling is so off that it doesn't even recognize what it was I was trying to spell.  That's pretty bad. Other times, I find myself changing words as I mindlessly click buttons around.  The other day, I found myself writing something that was meant for all of my in-laws to read, and after I "published" what I wrote Isaiah pointed out that I told them all that I was "Barley" there.

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, barley is Barley is a cereal grain derived from the annual grass Hordeum vulgare.  The All wise computer once again put me in my place, and I was Barley there.  He....he...he....

Lewis and Clark

Isaiah has a special fondness for early American exploration and hopes to grow up to be an early American explorer.  So this week, he is reading a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and each day coming home to tell me all about everything he he has read.  Here are some of the things I learned:

-Lewis was not a first name.
-Meriwether is not "Mary-weather."
-Lewis was not a woman named Mary.
-Lewis was not a woman at all.
-Because "Mary-Weather" was not a woman, it makes it a lot less odd that he was very very close friends with Thomas Jefferson.
-Apparently, their team traveled by boat most of their trip.  Not by camel. According to Isaiah they had not invented camels yet.

Another Tidbit from Montana. Actually, From Idaho. My bad.

Some random tidbits from Montana

When the cost of the memorabilia outweighs the benefits, the phrase "Take a picture, it lasts longer" comes in handy.

These happy times.....our four year aniversary surprise.

People may ask why my photos are so green.  Its because I live in Oregon and it is green here.

I'm not so sure what he's doing.