Grandma’s House

We went to Grandma’s house for enchilada night tonight – yum!!

Grandma has a little patch of bluebonnets in her yard, so of course I snapped a couple of pictures.

We sure to love spending time with family every other Tuesday!!

James woke up early and only had a medium sized nap at school.  He was plum tuckered out.

But apparently in the mood for sweeping.

The girls love to play on Grandma’s piano.

Look at the depth and seriousness of that gaze – oh my!

The busy cooks in the kitchen.

Joanna made her own ice cream cone.

She’s got some serious concentration going on.

This was going to me mine and James’ to “share.”  Hmmm… right.

He looooooooved his ice cream, but he never did get the hang of actually eating the cone.  And fortunately he didn’t fuss when I had him throw the soggy mess into the trash can and say “bye bye.”

I am so exhausted this evening and just not feeling myself.  I snuck a caffeinated soda at Grandma’s house (I’m weak!), and it helped a bit.  :)  I think I’ll probably crash early though.  I’m hoping the children truly love me and will sleep late in the morning.

A girl can dream.

Salmon Patties, photographed

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to become a food blogger, but it sure is nice to be able to take decent pictures of food!

I’ve posted my “recipe” for salmon patties before, but I’ll do it again here, with a few pictures to go with it.

I didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked because the people were hungry, and it takes a lot longer to make a dish when you photograph it!

We used to make this with just one can of salmon.  sigh.  That is no longer enough food.  :)

2 cans of salmon, drained

1 sleeve of Ritz (or storebrand) crackers, crushed into crumbs

Mix those up with four beaten eggs until you get a nice mush.

Then form them into equal sized patties, however big you’d like.

The last couple of times I’ve made these I have used my large cookie scoop to portion out the mix, then used my hands to form each scoop into a patty.

They’d probably cook okay on a nonstick surface without any kind of fat, but I like that crunchy brown outside.  I used olive oil, but you can really use anything.

Fry them until they’re brown, flip, and repeat.

I told myself I was going to count them, but I forgot.  Here’s how many it made though.  :)

I serve them with ketchup for dipping.

We ended up with enough leftover to have for lunch the next day.  Yay!

Playing and hugging

This was a couple of days ago.  The kids are getting very used to having Junior around!  It will be strange when he goes back home.

This morning after we dropped Joanna off at school, Ray wanted to play with the trains.

Natalie wanted to play too!

They got to play in peace while James the Destroyer was having a snack.

Once he got down though, not much was left of the railroads.

Who?  Me?

You wouldn’t know it was 82 degrees out today by the accessories the girls put on this evening.  :)

I’m sad we didn’t have much opportunity to wear heavy winter stuff this past season.

Oh well.

James and Natalie

The children’s bedroom has the best light in the whole house.  It is sadly the only room with a window facing that direction.  :(  The kitchen has pretty good light too I think; it’s on the other side of the house.  The light in the rest of the house isn’t awful, but there are times of the day that the light is just glaring.  Anyway… I have always loved the childrens’ room; it’s just so calm and wonderful.  I’m sure that has at least something to do with the lighting.  I cleaned up in there pretty well yesterday, and finished hanging some things on the wall (you can’t tell from the pics though), and we wandered in there this morning and took a few pictures.

The eyes!!

The lips!!

Those feet!!

I know her face is blurred a bit, but I think it kind of fits with the look on her face.  I like it.  :)

Joanna was at school, which is why she wasn’t featured in this post.

Um, yes. More pictures.

I was playing with shutter speed for these next few, so I had my children do what they do best.

I set the camera on a slow shutter speed and I told Joanna to run. 

Then I set it much faster and had her run again.  What fun!

Natalie can run too, but what she does best is twirl.  :)

Very fast shutter:

Very slow:

More in the middle but pretty fast.  I LOVE this one:

She looks so old.  :(

I love how she’s got her tongue out. :)

If you look on the right, you can see Natalie’s foot disappearing.  They were playing tag.

Just now on the couch.

Eventually she’s going to stop allowing me to stalk her with my camera.

I’m milking it until then… funny faces and all.

So I bet you can guess what this blog is going to look like for awhile

It’s going to look like me taking millions of pictures of my children and posting some of them here just because I can.

Matt took these next three yesterday after work.

Princess Joanna!

James in Daddy’s hat and Daddy’s arms.

This is what Junior does when James is eating.  He knows that James drops food.

I was playing with changing the aperture from little to big.

I told Joanna she could make faces.

I think she’s a pirate.

I think the aperture is as wide as it will go here.  Ick!  Her face sums up my feelings about that.  :)

I think this is the first one I took vertically.  Her dress made me do it.

She’s looking under the deck.  I am in love with her hair.

And she’s young enough to still have cute feet.  :)

I like this one of Natalie, but James must have been mid-blink or something in the background.

They are cute.  I will keep them.

The camera too.