the mostly-half-ironmanstagram.

after i made this collage, i realized that all of my indian trails
instagrams were in another folder! oops.
they could probably use their own collage anyway.

jumping-right-into-summerstagram.

wow. i'm a little behind. maybe it's because we've been:

happy father's day.

happy father's day to all of the dads in our life!

especially to the one who
"does so much fun stuff with us, like build a chicken coop."
well said, court.
love you, honey. glad we're in this together.
couldn't have asked for a better dad for our kiddos.
xo

how may flew right on bystagram.

field trip.

out from under the heat lamp and into the sunshine.





and a shot of my tomato plant. which i hopefully won't kill.
i'm hoping that because we're farmers now, it will all work out.

cartwheels and fishy lips.

a chick named sally, swede, and the jilted bachelorettes.

so. we have chickens. and this is the story:

two weeks ago, on a super busy-get a run in right after breakfast-tball game- home-shower-throw a load of laundry in quick so we can get to baseball and then go to work kind of weekend, i ran down to the basement to start the laundry and couldn't help but notice something different out the window.

they were so busted.

i saw what appeared to be the startings of a chicken coop under the deck stairs.
hmm, i thought. that looks like a chicken coop.
so i asked them. they had no idea what i was talking about.

i played it cool. because i love surprise pets. they know that.

i suggested that since we almost already had the coop,
maybe we should think about getting some chickens.

history: andy has wanted chickens for, like, ever.

immediately after i said those magic words,
there was a about a five minute rapid firing of plans
and ideas about us becoming city living chicken farmers.

since nobody had officially 'fessed up to the secret plan,
i tried to get some inside info from the one least likely to keep a secret.
even after i told her that i knew all about it, she refused to tell.
"does dad know that you know?" and "i'm not talking about his anymore."

it's amazing to me how quickly they became experts. about chickens.
the next day, they woke me up at 6:30 with about a million chicken facts
that they had read from their chicken farming book
that they had bought at farm and fleet the night before.
they showed me pictures on the internet
of what kinds of chickens they wanted to raise and why.
they explained the difference between a brooder and being broody.
etc, etc, etc.

to make a long story still not that short,
we have four day old baby chicks.
in the basement, in a brooder.
and a few after-school-coop building projects to do.

and in a few months, some eggs to eat. and probably share.
because we're chicken farmers. who live in the city.
and i'm a good sport.










the names:

court named hers sally. she wanted to change it to skittles,
but we convinced her to stick with her first choice.

swede: because it's an australian breed and swede loves all things australian.
besides, we name all of our surprise pet birds swede.

the rest of them are named after jilted bachelorettes:
because we watch every episode of every season
and we thought it would be a nice tribute.
don't judge. season 8 starts 5/14/12 at 7pm central time
on abc in case you want to set your DVR.

crossing the creek.

this is a special place for us.
the creek. the woods. the benson farm.
lots of good times between 1996 and now.
i've been looking for this picture of andy and i for years.
i remembered it looking differently,
but the chord it struck was the same.
after i saw the images of our kids there last weekend,
i decided i had to find it.

april: never-a-dull-momentstagram.

ohyeah,goodpoint.

her reply to everything is "ohyeahgoodpoint".
now when she says it, we all crack up.
it's one of her sixisms that i want to remember forever.

to mom. from us. with love.

dear mom,

while we've been waiting, we've been fishing and learning and watching winter turn into spring turn into summer and playing the recorder and taking silly pictures and training and skiing and watching sunrises and swinging and growing and running and photographing and commuting and working and watching flowers bloom and getting face washes and going to gymnastics and building homes for orphans and coloring and sunbathing on the deck of dad's boat and learning to read and writing our names and growing pigtails and building cabinets and sniffing things and planting and playing games and fishing and hiking and planning music festivals and swimming and curling our tongues and making paper hearts and biking and building fences and skiing and fishing and laughing and crying and missing and wishing and hoping and living and waiting.

and we can't wait to share it all with you.
happy birthday with love from all of us.

(to clarify, the dogs have been sniffing things. not us.)

take me out to the tballpark.

i love that they all run after every ball.
that they sometimes forget which direction to run.
that somehow her uniform ends up muddy and grass stained.
that she forgets her classmates are on the other team.
the dandelion picking and rest taking.
the inner-coach in her brother and her dad.

because you have the kind of mom that accidentally buys brown eggs. that's why.

oops.
whatever. i think they're pretty.

thought bubbles.

one week until my first 5k.

if i had a thought bubble over my head while i was training,
it would look something like this:

i can't do this. i might be able to do this. i can totally do this.
i can't believe i just did that. this is hard. i smell bacon. that's mean.
wow, this isn't that hard. do we have bacon at home?
mmm...grilled cheese with bacon. and tomato. i feel fast today.
could i possibly run any slower? am i as skinny as my shadow?
i like those flowers. don't step in that dog poop. it feels so good to breathe.
thank you for being sunny today. this is a great song. training is so hard.
i really hate this. i love this. i'm so much stronger. my body aches all over.
there's no way i'm stopping.
how did andy run a marathon? will i ever be ready? i'm almost ready.
ok, i'm ready.

winter-into-springstagram.

the difference.

the difference between photographers and normal people
is that we never stop thinking about light.
as the sun comes up. as it goes down.
as we're driving the kids to school.
as we walk past a window at work.

and in this case, how lucky we would be to capture it filtering through her hair
so perfectly because we happened to be there at that very second
with a camera in our hands.

i happened to say
"oh, what pretty light."
this morning on the way to school.
two groans from the backseat
told me that they knew exactly what i was thinking.

a super short silent tball movie.

tball practice from Tracy Mueller on Vimeo.

sometimes you just have to pick it up and try again.