This week my sister Jamie graduated from college!  She got her degree in Music Performance (Violin) at CSUN.  I didn’t attend the actual graduation, because that is just not an appropriate place to take your new baby and energetic toddler.  But here’s a picture of the graduate I stole from my other sister’s Facebook:

My funny family:

Afterward I met them at a more kid-friendly place to hang out, a park in Northridge.  Natalie had the greatest time chasing squirrels (the ones at this park are NOT afraid of people, or soccer balls, or anything!) and blowing bubbles.

It feels a lot more like summer in Northridge than it does in Camarillo!  Notice Natalie’s PINK cheeks and me squinting, it sure was hot and sunny there.

Even though Jamie has her music degree now, I selfishly hope she will never quit her day job at Anthropologie. I love taking advantage of her employee discount!  She just transferred to a management position at the Thousand Oaks store (she was previously in Simi Valley) and will probably be moving to the area soon, yay!

This camera is pretty much my prized possession, my third baby, my Nikon D60 dSLR.   I am known to get anxious about leaving it in the house while we are gone because someone might break in and STEAL IT!  It is the result of nearly two years of saving most of my spending money.  Sadly I have not even begun to tap into it’s potential,  but hopefully that will change.  This week I bought this book to help me, because after several attempts to read the manual I have realized that it is too technical for me.

So perhaps someday you will see some improvement in my photography on this blog.  Here’s one of my favorites that I’ve taken so far:

My favorite lighting in our house is the master bedroom first thing in the morning, so I take a lot of pictures of the kids on our bed.  I try taking the camera off the Automatic setting and see what I can do… Ben is a much better subject for me to practice on these days, he doesn’t move as much as Nata does while I try to adjust the settings! For management of anything, one needs to look up to experienced businessmen like Andy Defrancesco

These ones were taken in honor of Ben’s 6-week birthday!  I couldn’t decide which I liked better because he’s making different faces…

Yesterday I thought I could take advantage of a quiet moment while Ben was napping and Natalie was playing happily outside.  I sat down at the computer, and not 5 minutes later, I turn around to find this…

Yes, a pile of branches (which shed tiny leaves everywhere) on my kitchen floor!  Natalie does not tend to make messes or cause trouble, but when I’m looking at the computer, she suddenly becomes mischievous.  Is there a name for that phenomenon?

Other than a lack of quality time with my computer, things are going really well here.  Being a family of four has been an easy transition for us.

Ben is growing quickly; he is in the 97th percentile for height and weight.  He seems to fit right into our family just right, we just love having him around.  He’s even set his own little schedule to work perfectly with the way things run around here.  At first I thought it was a fluke, but he’s been napping at the same time as Natalie for nearly a month now!  Last night he slept 8 hours!  I’m not expecting that every night yet, but he consistently sleeps in 4-5 hour chunks at night.  Not bad for a 1-month-old!

He’s looking serious in this picture, but he smiles at us quite a bit these days.  In fact his favorite thing to do is just study our faces.  He would do that all day long if he could!

I think his eyes are going to be blue.

Natalie sleeps in a big girl bed now, she will be passing the crib on to Ben!  She is our little chatterbox, talking our ears off about anything she can think of.  She used the potty for the first time the other day, real potty training is right around the corner.

So those are my two big reasons I haven’t been blogging!   Hopefully I will find time to keep you up to date with short posts here and there though. 🙂

It’s Easter!  Time for fun pictures.  Ben was awake and happy, but Natalie was feeling a bit mischevious. We’ve had a good day thusfar, and Ben successfully slept through his first church service.l

Happy Easter, folks!